Chapter 42: The Shining Bald Head Under the Sunlight
"...Where'd he go?"
Following a trail of wheel-rut footprints that Ross had made essentially no effort to conceal, a bald head with a manji tattoo on the forehead had crossed the island on a diagonal and was now scratching that forehead in puzzlement.
Not Hanzou. This was Hanzou's senior from the same school — Badge 293, Kazemaru, originally transplanted from the YYH universe and one more product of Togashi mining the same material twice.
Ross had assumed he was keeping a low profile. In practice, anyone paying attention had already put him on the watch list a long time ago.
During the first-phase Man-Faced Ape incident, he had produced a navigation arrow that could only have come from a Nen ability. Fellow Nen users notice these things. Kazemaru was a ninja by profession, and his main line of work in ordinary life ran to bodyguard and security chief positions — memorizing identifying characteristics at maximum speed was effectively occupational instinct. It wasn't just Ross's badge number he had retained. He had the badge numbers and faces of every candidate who had cleared Trick Tower and reached the ground floor.
And his hunting target was Badge 406: Ross.
From Kazemaru's read of the situation, Badge 406 appeared to have some kind of Nen ability suited for long-range pursuit and quick exits, but his actual combat capability was negligible — no trace of any real fighting development at all.
To avoid complications, Kazemaru planned to hit his target hard during this opening window while he was fresh.
If Ross was sensible and handed over his badge voluntarily, that was the ideal outcome, and Kazemaru had no objection to giving him a chance to attempt a counterattack afterward if he wanted to try.
If Ross wasn't sensible, Kazemaru was equally prepared to break the relevant limbs and take it himself.
But now the trail had just cut off. Had he been spotted?
Maintaining Zetsu, Kazemaru carefully swept the immediate area in a wide circle, then shifted his gaze upward to the tree canopy.
A series of effortless jumps brought him up into the higher branches quickly. Then his pupils contracted on their own, just slightly.
Because the scene in front of him was genuinely difficult to process.
In an obviously abandoned bird's nest, arranged with complete neatness, sat something that looked exactly like a computer keyboard.
Where had that come from?
Kazemaru's head, which already caught the light under any direct sun, became briefly even more radiant.
Because of Ross's personal preferences, the console body had been built in the exact form of a Little Tyrant learning machine — which meant anyone unfamiliar with that specific piece of hardware would simply see a keyboard with an unusual layout. Kazemaru had no frame of reference for it.
Looking at how new the thing was, there was no possibility it had been left here and weathered by someone who forgot it. The most logical explanation was that whoever had reached this far end of the island first — and the only candidate who had come in a straight line in this direction was Badge 406 — had brought it here and left it.
Why Badge 406 would leave it sitting in a plainly visible abandoned bird's nest was something Kazemaru could not begin to work out.
Ross had no bag large enough to carry something of that size, which made it very likely a Conjuration-type item. And based on general experience with Conjuration abilities, which tended toward the unusual, Kazemaru made a snap decision to back jump away from the still-running console and put some distance between himself and it.
But he had no intention of simply leaving it there.
"Hate to waste the resource..."
From a position roughly a hundred meters out in a straight line from the Little Tyrant, Kazemaru muttered to himself as he reached into his jacket and produced a shuriken.
Whoosh.
In his practiced professional grip, the black shuriken flew in a clean arc toward the Little Tyrant's location.
It struck dead center.
Then:
Boom.
A considerable explosion rolled across Zevil Island.
The Explosive Tracking Shuriken — one of Kazemaru's signature techniques. By his own estimation, using it on something like this was overkill. The Explosive Tracking Shuriken had the destructive yield of a fragmentation grenade and came with an automatic homing function that tracked active Nen users. As long as the target's Zetsu wasn't completely airtight, it would follow them indefinitely — highly effective for both restricting movement and running down a target.
The trade-off was that detonating it announced his position to everyone on the island. But neutralizing an unknown Nen tool in a target's hands was, in his calculation, worth it.
He turned to go, intending to find cover elsewhere and reassess his hunting plan.
Then the smoke cleared.
And Kazemaru stopped where he was.
The Little Tyrant's Endless Amusement console floated in midair, completely undamaged, as if it had snagged on some invisible wall in the fabric of reality.
The abandoned bird's nest was gone. The upper half of the tree it had sat in was gone. Both had been reduced to fragments.
Kazemaru opened his mouth, said nothing, and stood there for a few seconds while his pupils did something involuntary. Then his professional composure hauled itself back into place, and he turned and disappeared into the jungle without looking back.
Insufficient yield? Or did this thing have some kind of rule protecting it from external force?
He couldn't work it out. But somewhere in his mental register, he quietly moved Ross's threat assessment up one tier.
The detonation sound of the Explosive Tracking Shuriken was, depending on the candidate, either a directional signal worth moving toward or a reason to head the other way. It all came down to individual personality and how a given person made decisions under pressure.
Take Yusuke, for instance — fourth off the ship and currently wandering without any particular direction. He made his decision before the question had even fully formed: head toward the noise. The reasoning was straightforward: an explosion would draw curious candidates toward the source, and more people in one place meant a better chance of running into Badge 23, Kibano, and maybe even the probable demon calling himself Shaolin.
"That's roughly the right direction, isn't it?"
Yusuke picked a direction with rough confidence and set off at a long stride — and, without any particular surprise, walked directly the wrong way.
The explosion had come from roughly the eleven o'clock position on the island. Yusuke's confident heading was nine o'clock.
Kuwabara's situation was similar, though with his near-precognitive instincts he managed to aim himself at two o'clock — the opposite end of the island — and started making his way there at a steady pace.
In total, across sixty-two minutes of staggered landings, all thirty-two candidates were now on the island. Within the first ten minutes, scattered conflicts had already broken out in various locations across the terrain.
Some were minor. Some were not. All of them were being fought with full commitment, because the final phase was close enough to touch, and nobody here was interested in going home empty-handed.
The closer the deadline got, the more likely real casualties became.
Ross, currently inside the Secret Realm, was not dealing with any of that. But that did not mean things were calm on his end.
The Little Tyrant's console had just taken a direct hit from Kazemaru's Explosive Tracking Shuriken outside. Inside the Secret Realm, Ross at this moment was pushing every bit of speed he had and running for his life, throwing himself flat and sideways to avoid the missiles raining down from Dr. Eggman's bomber overhead.
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