“A mere machine—kacha! Has injured me …”
Cursing it did nothing. The drones shot after Orochimaru as one, as if they’d all realized they had him on the run. A muzzle slithered out of one drone, and the explosion timer started counting down on another.
Orochimaru stared coolly at the drones around him, but his nose was still twitching. “Haah … Haah …”
The muzzle flashed red. The explosion timer reached one.
“Haah … Haaaaaaachoo!!”
Zsh! Zsh! Zsh! Zsh!
Snakes flew out from Orochimaru’s mouth. Mandala of Endless Snakes Formation—his unique jutsu that allowed him to spew an incredible number of snakes from his mouth. Several hundreds of the reptiles covered the floor like a scaly carpet, slithering and twisting and leaping at the drones.
“Ah!” Surprised by the snakes crawling around underfoot, Naruto lifted a foot reflexively, and Orochimaru grabbed it tightly.
“I’ve had it,” he declared.
“Huh?” Naruto said, stunned.
Still holding Naruto’s ankle, Orochimaru tossed him straight into the air. Naruto sailed up the full five meters to the ceiling of the hangar and grabbed onto a sprinkler.
“Whoa! What are you doing, Orochimaru?!” he yelled, dangling from the ceiling.
“I’m done with this one-at-a-time situation. Go find the operator.”
The operator. Of the drones.
They might have been running on a simple program, but considering the way the drones were working together and the timing of the initial explosion, it could be that someone was giving them instructions.
Chihare did say that Furieh was in the hangar …
Arm still hooked over the sprinkler, Naruto looked down on the enormous space.
The heated battle of Snakes versus Drones was unfolding all around. The snakes were making good use of their ropelike bodies to twist and turn and skillfully toy with the drones.
Having finally stopped sneezing, Orochimaru was smashing the drones closest to him one after another in annoyance.
Boom!
Naruto put on the goggles and examined the airships.
“There we go.” He could sense chakra in the one parked by the north entrance, and he let go of the sprinkler.
Rather than simply falling in a straight line to the floor, he grabbed onto the arm of a passing drone. The captured machine shuddered and lost altitude, but surprisingly, it didn’t crash. In fact, not only did it keep flying, it stretched out the muzzle of its gun in front of Naruto’s nose.
Chk! The tip flashed red.
Perfect. Just as the gun was about to fire, Naruto twisted around and forcibly changed the drone’s direction. He turned the tip of the muzzle toward the airship parked near the entrance. The whole maneuver took less than a tenth of a second.
The laser beam shot straight forward and hit the airship, just like Naruto had intended.
Boom!
The wooden wall swelled up, burned to ash, and blew outward with the top of the ship. Naruto leaped down from the drone and went inside the airship.
From the exterior, he’d assumed it was a three-floor passenger type, but the interior had been retrofitted so that it was a single enormous room. A man holding a laptop computer was crouched on the floor near the prow.
He had the same face as the one Naruto had seen on the research institute’s website. Kanhen Furieh.
“Sup.” Naruto moved in a single leap to stand before Furieh. He tried to stay calm, but his voice betrayed his anger. “First time we’ve met in person, huh? Mr. Director Furieh.”
“Eep!” Furieh squeaked and began to tremble. He was operating the drones with the computer he held in both arms.
He was the head of an international organization, but his reaction upon seeing Naruto was quite pitiable. Pale lips shaking, eyes swimming about, he was so pathetic that Naruto couldn’t even muster up the energy to hate him.
“I don’t want to be any more violent than I have to be,” Naruto said flatly. “You get that, right?”
Furieh was scared. He shook his head up and down, opened the laptop, and tapped at the keys to deactivate the drones, which suddenly dropped to the floor outside the ship.
“Where’s Chihare’s device?”
With a frightened look on his face, Furieh raised a trembling finger.
Naruto followed it with his eyes and saw a black cube-shaped machine toward the rear of the ship’s interior—the pluripotent applicator. A round flask was connected to the machine, and silver sand glinted and glittered inside the glass sphere.
Those are the ultra particles then?
Seeing Naruto turn his attention toward the device, Furieh pulled a photon gun from inside his jacket. Of course, Naruto reacted quickly and easily dodged it, but the laser beam hit the flask of the pluripotent applicator.
Bang!
Glass flew everywhere. The exposed ultra particles spilled out onto the floor.
“Furieh!”
Still the coward right up until the nth hour.
A second before Naruto’s clenched fist shot out, a snake with its mouth wide open flew up to sink its fangs into Furieh’s throat. Orochimaru’s snake. The fangs were so deep in the administrator’s flesh, they were without a doubt poisoned.
Mere seconds later, Furieh’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he went quiet.
“You better not have killed him!” Naruto shouted, racing over to Furieh to check that he was still breathing. “Aah, that’s something at least.” He let out a sigh of relief.
“Don’t worry. That one just happens to have a paralysis poison,” Orochimaru said, shrugging slightly as he came into the airship.
“Great,” Naruto replied. “We’ll hand this guy over to the Anbu. He might have people working with him, but they’ll get that out of him.”
“What are you talking about? No point in letting a man like this live.” Orochimaru scowled, picked up the photon gun on the floor, and pointed the barrel directly at Furieh. “Faster just to kill him.”
“Stop!”