“You absolutely can’t do something so dangerous!”
“What? Then what’s your suggestion?” Naruto pursed his lips together, dissatisfied.
“Please look for a magnet,” she told him.
“A magnet?”
“There should be one somewhere nearby. This trap most likely uses eddy currents for the caltrops.”
Naruto screwed up his face in doubt.
“When you bring a magnet close to a piece of metal, it generates a powerful magnetic field in a whirlpool structure!” she explained quickly. “Most likely, there’s an enormous magnet somewhere in this room, and the power of the magnetic field is moving all of these caltrops!”
Eddy currents were also used in the airship braking systems. And this was an airship development lab. She was certain there was a device generating eddy currents with an enormous magnet somewhere. The fact that the caltrops were copper was likely because that metal was more easily influenced by magnetic fields than iron.
“The movement of the caltrops might seem random, but if you look closely, they’re moving in several whirlpool formations!”
When he focused on the chaos with the Byakugan, he did indeed find a regularity in the chaotic movement. Eddies were generated in the four corners of the room, and the caltrops were all rotating in line with one of them. With exquisite spacing so that no caltrop hit another, they spun endlessly in place.
But.
While Naruto followed the movement of the caltrops with his eyes, he came to a conclusion. “Whirlpools … This movement isn’t that.”
Master Iruka had said that the glyph of the whirlpool scattered endlessly toward the outside. But the movement of the caltrops before him was just a circle. Nothing more than independent rings, not connected to anything. They were simply spinning in the same place like planets around a sun; they weren’t going anywhere.
If the movement was that simple, then he should be able to see through it.
Naruto pulled the lever on the goggles again.
“W-what are you going to do?” Chihare said.
“I am actually going to force my way in.”
“What?!” Her eyes flew open wide in surprise, but Naruto was nothing if not confident.
“It’s okay. I probably won’t get hurt.”
Whatever else was going on, he had the Byakugan he’d borrowed from Hinata. He peeled back his eyelids and set his sights on a place where the caltrops were sparse. He watched for the right time, like entering a jump rope, and then kicked at the floor.
His body danced up into the air, and a prick of pain ripped through the top of his ear. Caltrop thorns stabbed the arm he had covering his face. But Naruto didn’t flinch at this level of pain and ran in a straight line into the eye of the storm in the center of the room.
“Owww. I guess they did actually get me a bit.” Naruto grinned ruefully as he looked himself over.
Chihare stared up at him, astonished. “Did you see through all of those caltrops?”
“If you pay attention to the whole and plan your next move, it’s not too hard.”
According to Neji at least, Naruto added in his mind, and hoisted Chihare up.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“What do you mean, what?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “We have to get out of here.”
Chihare realized that he intended to head back via the same path and paled. “Please let me down! There’s a safer way to break through!”
“You mean, the whole go find a magnet thing?” he asked. “But it’s not like I’m gonna find one right away. We don’t have time.”
“There’s another way! Maybe try listening until I’m done speaking. You’re too quick to jump into action the moment you have a thought.” Grumbling, Chihare slid out of Naruto’s arms and looked around the room intently before suddenly asking him, “Can you break the floor?”
“Break?” he parroted.
“However you want. Punch it, kick it. Just so long as you make a crack in it.”
Eddy currents occurred when a magnet approached a flat metal piece. In the case of this room, the floor of iron panels was performing the role of metal, so if they could deform the surface so it was no longer flat, the eddy current would disappear.
Obediently, Naruto slammed a fist into the floor as hard as he could.
Pok!
It didn’t shatter the way it would have if Sakura had been the puncher, but a large crack did open up in the floor. As expected, the whizzing caltrops stopped abruptly and clattered to the floor.
“What …” Naruto said, like the wind had been knocked out of his sails. “So I didn’t need to force my way across.”
With the slower Chihare over his shoulder, Naruto took the stairs four at a time down and out of the building, and headed for the hangar.
“Oh, they got you here too.” Chihare plucked out a caltrop stuck in his back and tossed it away as she let out a sigh, her view of the world upside down. “Honestly. Why should the Seventh Hokage get hurt on behalf of someone like me? It doesn’t make sense. If news gets out, I’m going to be the one taking all the heat, aren’t I? Why are you so nice? If you think that every single person is worth protecting like your friends, you are seriously mistaken.”
She knew that he was being nice enough to carry her and everything, but she couldn’t stop the protest from spilling out of her mouth.
“I can’t connect with other people in the world the way you do. I want to lock myself away and just live doing whatever I want. I’m that sort of person, you know?”
She grumbled at his back, and at first, Naruto let it slide, but he gradually grew irritated.