12 Human Bomb

The flames enveloping the exploding Tobishachimaru lit up the sky over the courtyard of Hozuki Castle.

“Hey, we got trouble here!” Pointing at the sky, the prisoners shouted in unison. “That thing’s gonna come right down on us?!”

Shikamaru had also quite clearly seen several parachutes abruptly opening up in the sky over Hozuki Castle a few minutes before that. Judging that Kakashi had successfully helped the passengers escape and that the falling people would need rescue, Shikamaru assigned Lee and Sai to the roof of the castle tower and ran out into the courtyard, with Sakura and Choji in tow, where the prisoners were milling about in confusion.

About the time Shikamaru had counted twenty-one parachutes, the Tobishachimaru was wrapped in a flash of light; the fire appeared to have been put out. But some of the parachutes of the people falling from the ship after the flash weren’t opening up. And there was no mistaking the fact that the Tobishachimaru was out of control and deflating by the second.

Taking into consideration the direction of the wind high up, Shikamaru did the calculations. The possibility of the Tobishachimaru crashing into Hozuki Castle was exceedingly small. But—

“Seriously bad…”

Even as he sensed Choji’s gaze on him, Shikamaru didn’t take his eyes off of Tobishachimaru. “The gondola’s fallen off. Right now, it’s like the ship’s lost its ballast. It’s going to just keep going up.”

Choji gulped hard. “What do you mean, Shikamaru?”

“At about nineteen thousand meters, the temperature at which blood boils is the same as the human body,” Shikamaru said. “Anyone left on what remains of the ship will die.”

“What!”

“What should we do…” Sakura’s face lost its color. “Master Kakashi is still in there?!”

“It’s already that high up, even Sai can’t do anything now,” Shikamaru said, as though it hurt him to have to put the thought into words. “At any rate, we’ll do what we can.”

“The parachutes are coming down!” Tenten shouted from the watchtower. “Toward the tower!”

With the weak sunlight breaking through the rain clouds hitting the top of it, the first of the parachutes drifted and wobbled toward the castle tower. When Shikamaru looked up, Lee was nodding up on the castle tower.

A side wind blew in, and the parachute drifted away. The cords connecting the parachute and the person—the suspension lines—got tangled, causing the person’s body to swing far to one side and then back again like a pendulum. The parachuter slipped out of the hands of Lee and the others waiting at the top of the tower and fell down toward the cell block.

“Kiba and Shino are on standby there—”

The landing point flashed white hot, and an explosion swallowed the rest of Shikamaru’s words.

Boooooom!

The cell block was enveloped in white smoke, and flames were soon flickering upward.

“W-what?!”

“Shikamaru!” Ino’s shrill cry hit Shikamaru’s ears as he stood rooted to the spot. “The parachute vests contain blue fire powder!”

“Ah?”

“There was a message from Master Kakashi!” Pushing her face out of a window in the castle tower, Ino mustered up all the voice she had. “There’s going to be an enemy assault!”

“Seriously…?”

The second parachute landed immediately outside the castle gates in a deafening explosion; the blast sent the castle gate flying. The prisoners looked at each other. They didn’t know what was happening, but when the next explosion took down a wall, they cheered as if they had awoken from a dream and started running.

“Yahoooo! I can finally say sayonara to this filthy hole!”

“Keep ’em coming, parachutes! Smash this place to dust!”

The chaos didn’t stop there.

“Lord Garyo!” Shinobi clad in black ninja uniforms surged into the castle, shouting loudly. “Where are you, Lord Garyo!”

“Tch. This just turned into a real hassle.” In the eye of the raging storm, Shikamaru took aim at the shadow of a parachute falling to earth and launched his jutsu.

“Suffocating Darkness!”

Shikamaru’s shadow hand stretched out, not to attack, but to save, and its dark fingers hooked on to the shadow of the parachute. With this as a support, he stopped the body attached to the parachute in midair.

“Tenten! Break the fasteners without damaging the vest!”

Leaping out from the watchtower, Tenten shot his ninja tools into the air. Once the fasteners were broken, the man suspended in midair slipped smoothly from the parachute and plunged to the ground.

“Aaaah!”

“Hngh!” Choji grabbed the falling man to stop him. “Hup!”

With the now-empty vest still attached, the parachute blew away on the wind.

Shikamaru didn’t even have the chance to take a breath. The human bombs came falling out of the sky one after another.

“Shadow Pull!”

The shadow of Shikamaru’s real-world body immediately developed countless tentacles and shot up to pin ten people in the air all at once. Normally, he used this technique to pull in physical objects, but he couldn’t have these physical objects—namely, the parachutes—anywhere near him.

The sound of an explosion echoed from the direction of the castle tower.

“Garyo’s getting away!” Tenten called, while breaking the fasteners on the vests. “What should we do, Shikamaru?!”

What should we do… With his jutsu activated, Shikamaru couldn’t move. All he could do was watch out of the corner of his eye as Garyo escaped guarded by the ninjas in black. Just what exactly are we supposed to do here?!

Sai’s large bird snatched up the people falling through the air, while Shino’s Parasitic Insects became a black cloud and gathered up the parachutes. Some people fell after the insects chewed through the fasteners on their vests, and Lee jumped out to catch them in midair.

Kiba and Choji, along with members of the Anbu, went after the fleeing prisoners. At the same time, they launched Fang Over Fang and Human Juggernaut to mow down prisoners.

In this vortex of confusion, Shikamaru looked up at the sky. Four parachutes remained.

“Shino!” Shikamaru shouted. “Can I leave the parachutes to you?!”

“Yeah!” Shino nodded, as she maneuvered the insects. “You go after Garyo.”

Shikamaru’s eyes caught the group in black beyond the throng of people. Garyo was being guarded by those shinobi on the other side of a curtain of fluttering colored maple leaves.

“Stop!”

Several people turned toward him and sent kunai flying.

“Get down!” Shikamaru dodged the kunai and wove signs as he ran. “Shadow Stitching!”

Shikamaru’s shadow transformed into a sharp needle and stabbed into the feet of his targets. Blood flowing from their feet, the enemy shinobi staggered and fell. He continued his pursuit of Garyo, but came to a stop before he had taken more than a few more steps. “What the…?”

In a strange turn of events, his opponent was running toward him!

“W-what is the matter, Lord Garyo?!” The black-clad shinobi were just as bewildered. “Come! We must hurry!”

“Step aside!” Shaking free of the ninja, Garyo came toward Shikamaru, waving his arms wildly. “Shikamaruuu!”

“Huh?” Shikamaru furrowed his brow. Had Garyo always been so feminine? He pulled his arms in and stood on guard against the man running toward him like a little girl. “Stop right there!”

“Honestly, what are you talking about? I’ve got Garyo, so you just go on and get the escaping prisoners with Choji and the others!”

He stared blankly.

“What are you just standing there for? It’s me! You know!”

“Ohh. Ino?”

Apparently, Ino had slipped into Garyo with her mind-transmission jutsu.

“Listen up, you!” Ino—or rather Ino wearing Garyo—turned to the enemy shinobi. “You lay a single finger on me, and I’ll kill your boss, got it?”

The ninjas took a step back.

“What are you doing, Shikamaru?! Go already!”

“Right… Got it.”

Why he did such a thing, even he himself didn’t know, but before he knew it, Shikamaru was gently patting Ino’s—Garyo’s—bottom.

“Eep!” Garyo—Ino wearing Garyo—bounced up into the air. “What are you doing?!”

“I’ve always wondered. So you still do say ‘eep’ even when you’re like that, huh.”

Ino—borrowing Garyo’s iron fist—cracked down hard on Shikamaru’s head with an Ino punch.

No one had yet noticed the three stars in the distance trailing along to the west of the total chaos of Hozuki Castle. For all intents and appearances, they were falling stars, but unlike normal falling stars, the three shining bodies were not falling from the sky, but steadily rising up into it.