Before Orochimaru could pull the trigger, Naruto flew at him, and the two tumbled to the floor. After rolling along the ground several times, Naruto somehow managed to snatch the photon gun away from Orochimaru, but the snake man stretched out his tongue and wrapped it around the gun. They each pulled on it for a while, a bizarre tug of war.
“Just when I thought you’d mellowed a bit!” Naruto cried. “You never change, do you!”
“Heh! You’re slipping. Could you not just go deciding things like that?” Orochimaru gave up on trying to win by force, pulled his tongue away, kicked at the floor, and got some distance from Naruto.
Wham!
Taking a vital hit, Naruto dropped the photon gun but immediately kicked it far away and stopped Orochimaru’s fist with one hand. He then caught the snake man’s other driving punch with his other hand.
The two fighters pushed against each other, and once again, it became a contest of strength.
“You’re soft, hm?” Orochimaru cooed. “Letting the man who tried to assassinate you live!”
“Shut up!” Naruto grabbed onto the sleeve of Orochimaru’s kimono and yanked him toward himself.
Konk!
Orochimaru took a headbutt right in the chin. Followed by two elbow strikes. Naruto had to finish this quickly with a close-range physical fight. It would all be over if Orochimaru managed to get some distance and weave some signs. Naruto obviously wouldn’t stand a chance if he got dragged into a ninjutsu fight, not when he couldn’t use chakra.
He launched a right straight at Orochimaru’s slender jaw as if to strike the final blow, and Orochimaru clamped a hand around his wrist.
Yellow, reptilian eyes locked onto Naruto from between the gaps in the mess of long black hair. A chill ran up his spine, and when for a moment, Naruto couldn’t move, Orochimaru’s fist came down on his face.
“Mmph!”
His lip split with a resounding crack. He was punched twice, three times, and the blood flowing from his lip mixed with that from his nose and dripped onto the floor. Naruto was trying to keep ninjutsu from being used, and here Orochimaru was, proving to be a real opponent in a physical fight.
Right around the seventh punch, Naruto somehow grabbed onto Orochimaru’s sleeve and yanked him hard down to the floor. He wrapped his arms around the other man’s elbows and was about to try out some locking techniques when he heard a whnk. He dropped his gaze with a gasp and saw that Orochimaru’s eyes had rolled back and he was foaming at the mouth. His dislocated right arm hung limply at his side like a mollusk.
Huh? But I didn’t do anything yet!
While Naruto was distracted, Orochimaru slithered out of his arms.
“Ah!”
Right. This snake man could dislocate his joints at will. The frothing at the mouth had just been a distraction.
Orochimaru scooped up the photon gun and turned the barrel toward Furieh laid out on the floor.
Vwwm!
The laser beam shot out and grazed the director’s knee.
“Aaaugh!” Furieh threw himself back. His knee bounced up at the touch of the super high-temperature beam and burst into flames. The heat moved from cell to cell, the fire growing larger before their eyes, spreading from knee to thigh to hip.
“Aunh! Hot! Ah! Aaaaaah! Aaaaaaah!”
Furieh writhed around on the floor in anguish, but that wasn’t enough to put out the fire started by the photon gun. The roaring flames were already licking at his stomach.
“You!”
Naruto leaped at Orochimaru’s back. The photon gun dropped from the other man’s hand and clattered onto the floor. Naruto clenched a fist to finish this with a single blow, and Orochimaru suddenly vanished. Naruto whirled his head around as a hand stretched out from behind to grab his neck.
“Quite a misunderstanding to think that I had mellowed.” Orochimaru’s murmuring caressed his earlobe. “Killing Furieh, one man, is nothing to me.”
“So then why … did you try! To stop Furieh … ! I bet … it’s because … Mitsuki’s in town!” Naruto panted, his windpipe crushed and his consciousness beginning to fade.
Something hit his heel. The photon gun Orochimaru had dropped.
Squinting to focus his blurred vision, he saw Chihare fearfully pressed to the wall outside the airship.
“Chihare!” Naruto shouted, his voice on the verge of giving out entirely, and kicked the photon gun. It spun around as it slid across the floor and came to a stop when it hit Chihare’s foot.
Orochimaru slowly turned his face toward her.
“Give that to me,” he said in a low voice. He let go of Naruto and slowly walked toward Chihare.
“Chihare! Pick it up!” Naruto cried, mustering what was left of his hoarse voice, still on his knees. “Pick it up and fire at the ceiling!”
Chihare jumped at the photon gun, squeezed her eyes shut, and pointed the barrel at the ceiling.
Bang!
The spot where the beam of light from the muzzle hit was charred black in an instant, and the heat quickly spread through the entire ceiling.
“What are you …” Orochimaru muttered.
The hangar’s sprinklers were heat-sensing types. If the system detected temperatures above a certain baseline, it would issue an order to the disaster prevention units set up at ten-yard intervals and put out the fire.
Silver devices popped out of the ceiling and water rushed out from them. Clouds rose up as the water evaporated, and the flames burning Furieh’s body sizzled and died out.
The inside of the hangar was immediately flooded. The airships, the pluripotent applicator, and the ultra particles that spilled to the ground when the flask broke.
“. . .”
Naruto had known this would happen, which was why he told her to fire at the ceiling.
The ultra particles his friends had brought back for him evaporated in little puffs of white steam.