The three teens continued to stare at the mobster leader with completely out of this world expressions. Having just been revealed so much within the last couple of hours of their lives, something like that would cause such reactions in a person so they were completely justified in their utter confusion. It was safe to say that their entire worlds had flipped over, the entire way in which they conceived this weird world changed to the point where the world where children could breathe fire and lift giant boulders looked incomparably weirder than it initially was.
After several seconds of confusion Mana's body just leaned forward as if it was falling to the front, then it tensed up, her muscles just shot into action and fired her body off to run towards the giant hole where her friend was tossed into, where, apparently, the Nine-Tails resided below. She ran towards it with all of her speed, which while unimpressive to a ninja was quite something compared to her normal standards. The leader of the Syndicate even stepped aside to let the girl through, he had no intention to stop her in her quest to have her innards be feasted on by a colossal Tailed Beast.
Shimo's head leaned forward slightly, he closed his eyes and then looked at Meiko. "Stop her" he commanded her with a voice full of disgust and desperation.
To the blacksmith redhead, it was apparent that the stunt that Mana pulled on the top floor of the mines greatly rotted the relationship between the two friends. Shimo now looked at the magician as if she was a burden, an annoyance and whereas previously he looked at the girl with some admiration, nostalgia, and eyes overflowing with friendship, now he looked at her like a cow looks at a horsefly.
"What do you mean, what's this Nine Tails? Why is it such a big deal?" Meiko shook her head before Shimo broke into a fit of rage.
"Just shut up and stop her, damn it! I'll explain later. This is above not only our paygrade but also that of a Kage level ninja. This is a monster that needs to be left there, don't listen to any of Mana's bullshit, just grab hold of her and don't let go. Knock her out if you need to. The Nine-Tails and she must not cross paths, it's not a brawl that'll end favorably. I'll take care of this joker here..." he explained. Meiko nodded, her body blurred and disappeared leaving a ghostly afterimage.
Mana kept on rushing towards the hole when Meiko's image appeared right in front of her. These ninja moved at such speeds that it was tough for Mana to even keep up with it. She may have had peak human ability to perceive speed but even a genin managed to move so fast that to her it appeared like Meiko was teleporting around the place. It was like she was everywhere, or rather, anyplace she wanted to be in.
"Mana, stop..." she uttered pushing away Mana's hand which tried to push Meiko out of her way. The blacksmith gently let Mana's hand flow forward and then directed it to move behind the magician before she locked it behind the magician's own head placing her in a painful lock where any effort to break free would've caused Mana some additional pain.
"No! Let go! Kouta is down there with the Nine-Tails! We must get down there and save everyone who can still be saved..." Mana shouted out through pain, even when dislocation of her arm was the danger it didn't scare the girl. She was ready to struggle until her shoulder popped out of its socket and then face the Nine-Tails with a dislocated arm if she had to.
"Look... Just... Wait, can you please explain to me what this Nine-Tails thing is first. I know that Shimo doesn't want us to even face it, he's threatened by it to the extent where it actually sounds pretty scary even without knowing what it actually is..." Meiko mumbled out trying to buy some time, she knew that once Mana would get into explaining just what this Nine-Tails was she'd get into detail, that'd buy Shimo some time to finish fighting that mobster and get there to help her convince Mana of... Whatever their next plan was.
"There's no time! We need to help him!" Mana yelled out as she leaped forward in such an angle that it'd have dislocated her arm instantly, it was fortunate for her that Meiko released the lock just at the last second seeing that the magician's desire to save her friend wouldn't be contained by any boundaries of self-preservation. Meiko's foot, however, swept at Mana's knocking the magician down and then Meiko sat right on Mana's chest placing her arm on the magician's neck. She didn't apply any pressure to it because she knew that Mana would just waste all her air and get strangled instead of stopping.
"Kouta is a smart guy, pretty tough too. He can stay hidden, he can escape if he wanted to, ninja can scale walls, right? He'll appear up here at any moment, no need to put yourself in danger, so what's this Nine Tails? Why can't we just hop down there and kick its ass?" Meiko grunted out as restraining Mana's relentless struggling was starting to tax her a little as well. She didn't want to actually knock her friend out but she was approaching that line and would cross it quite soon if it was needed.
"No. It's impossible... Look, I'll explain it to you, just... You have to trust me and let me go, if you want an explanation then let me go and follow me, I'll explain it to you on my way down there" the magician tried to trick her way out of Meiko's immovable lock but Meiko let Mana go and shook her head.
"No, you explain it to me now and I'll decide later. It's either that or I knock you out for good. You may be a challenge to me when you're at your full strength but not in your hindered state, it'd only take a single restrained punch..." Meiko decided.
"Fine" the magician sighed, she stood up and dusted her clothes with a rough pat before fixing her hair and beginning to try and make a short explanation for it all.
"There was once a powerful kunoichi, she was called Princess Satsuhimasa. She lived in the time when all the clans were unified into two groups: the Earth Clan and the Moon Clan. At some point, the Moon Clan decided that the Moon was too small to contain all the mighty clans that comprised the Moon Clan so they waged war on the entire world attempting to take it over. Princess Satsuhimasa destroyed the Moon and forced the Moon Clan to submit, then she went through a quest of redemption and fixed the Moon again, transferring her own life force through her tree that fixed the Moon." Mana tried to shorten the story and compress it as much as she could but then she realized how much still needed to be explained to someone who didn't care about history that much.
"Okay... Let's say any of that makes a sand grain of sense and assume I believe all of it..." Meiko squinted at Mana. The magician couldn't blame her friend's lack of trust, the story of ninja who could effortlessly destroy planetary objects did sound a bit hard to believe even to someone who grew up in the world of ninja which wasn't a very natural world that was easy to believe in all by itself.
"The mistake of the Princess was that she granted her own life force to the tree by letting it flow through it. The World Tree became sentient, it formed a being of Satsuhimasa's soul and the body of the most powerful Senju clan wood – the Ten-Tails. It was said to be so massive and powerful that just the sight of it caused people to go insane and claw their eyes out, just its very existence threatened to destroy the world – Earth would've been destroyed just because the Ten-Tails was in it. Despite giving the Ten-Tails its substance and life, Satsuhimasa herself couldn't even hope to match up to it and so she and her husband and her son were beaten, however her husband – Yosuke Uchiha did manage to split the beast into nine smaller beasts, it initially intended to seal away its power leaving Ten-Tails in a weaker form but that didn't work, he had to split its immense chakra into nine separate beings"
Meiko scratched her head in confusion but then she suddenly realized something, "Wait, are you telling me that what's down there is actually... A part of this Ten-Tails thing!?"
Mana knew that she was digging a grave to whatever hopes of Meiko letting her save Kouta she had previously but she decided to be honest. "Not just "a part", it is said later in some of Yosuke's own chronicles that the form where he tried to seal Ten-Tails' chakra away is the Nine-Tails. That is to say, Nine-Tails is actually a weakened form of the Ten-Tails and the chakra that Yosuke managed to seal away in the next dimension got later mixed into it again and then split apart into more parts. The Nine-Tails is so powerful, or one could say, Yosuke's seal was so inefficient against that incomprehensible power, that Nine-Tails alone could've challenged Ten-Tails and fared quite well against it. The rest of the Tailed Beasts are just made out of the chakra which Yosuke did manage to seal away while the Nine-Tails is what's left of Ten-Tails without that chakra"
Meiko grabbed Mana's elbow and started to drag her back. "Well then... Back to the top floor we go..." she cut so decisively that her intention to never be questioned on the grounds of this decision was self-evident.
Mana gently pulled her elbow out and looked at her friend with a begging look. "Meiko... Please... I know it sounds stupid to you, it looks stupid that I want to go down there and place myself in front of that thing to save Kouta but... I have to. I brought him here and I can't let him get eaten by that thing"
Meiko shook her head. "You're not the Mana I know. The Mana I know makes rational plans, she manages to pull off impossible moves like convincing the Hokage to leave on a mission to find some mysterious wish fulfillment box just to make her friend feel good or slitting her own throat to avoid getting her friends killed. But she always knows something, has some ace up her sleeve – she plans out the conversation beforehand or she knows that the card won't cut her deep enough to kill her. What you're doing now is irrational, you're placing yourself in front of someone strong enough to shatter worlds into clouds of rock, someone who could disintegrate us with a mean look. There's no rational part of this plan which is why I can't let you go down there"
Mana looked away and then back at Meiko. "Yeah, there's no plan, there's no Plan B because there isn't even a Plan A. I just... I need to save Kouta, even if that means placing myself in front of the Nine-Tails to do it. I'd rather get eaten alive than lose him when I'm the one who took him with us"
Meiko turned back at Mana to finish the argument but a powerful shock impact made her cover her eyes – a blinding cloud covered her entire upper body as Mana's smoke card blew right in her face. When the smoke settled Mana was nowhere to be seen. The redhead looked around knowing how badly she screwed up and looked down into the largest hole in the floor she's ever seen, caused by the Nine-Tails trying to get out initially before it was pushed back by the bombardment from that gigantic cannon.
"Shimo's going to kill me... Oh well... I guess I'm dead either way then..." she whispered to herself before leaping into the hole herself. The darkness swallowed the girl and just like that deadly silence covered the bottom room of the mine up. Only brief sounds of Shimo fighting the mobster leader killed it on occasion.
*****
"Okay, let's mambo, ye goomba" the mobster stood in the fisticuffs position ready to use his Audra knuckledusters. Shimo's body blurred again, he slashed at the mobster who instinctively thrust his fist forward to try and interrupt the ninja's movements but he was unsuccessful. The boy's sword left a wide gash onto the mobster's back. The dwarf recovered from the pain swinging around him and hitting blindly behind his back. Shimo placed his sword to block the blow, a powerful shockwave echoed sending chakra ripples that mercilessly whipped into the mine walls causing them to start falling down.
"Shit..." Shimo grunted picking his body off the ground, he didn't expect such a powerful shockwave to come from that impact. That must've been the strange chain reaction of two Audra weapons colliding.
"Heh, what's the matter? Afraid of a little cave in? I'd rather get buried under fifty floors of rock than go face the Big Guy down there, consider us lucky..." the mobster smiled leaping forward and swinging his fist at the ninja, Shimo carelessly leaned out of the way when he saw a small kunai dispenser slip out from the dwarf's sleeve and get placed right on his forehead. The little man's face covered with a confident smile, it looked pretty creepy combined with his pompous hair which was now all whipped up and all over his face like someone poured a bucket of black hairy sludge over his head.
"Yer pretty fast, ye bugger, fast enough to evade a kunai shot right in your face, I wonder?" the dwarf smiled as his finger pulled the small ring connected to the rope that fired the kunai. It took only small fractions of a second to fire that kunai which would've pierced deep into Shimo's skull and easily penetrated his brain killing him instantly or leaving him with some nasty brain damage, however... The kunai just flew forward and down into the giant hole as the man who had the dispenser rammed into his head was no longer there the other moment.
Lacking any semblance of belief in what had just happened the mobster took a couple of steps back, he shook in disbelief that someone could've evaded a shot in point blank range, he had faced ninja before but he never had the pleasure of actually fighting one to the end like this. Seeing those inhuman bastards pull stunts like this made the dwarf genuinely terrified of facing them ever again. Even with all those tricks, all those fancy tools, and weapons... He was still outmatched.
Shimo's body flickered back into existence, as far as the dwarf mobster could perceive it at least, right up to his still extended arm and raised his arm up nonchalantly in an attempt to literally disarm the mobster. The poor dwarf screamed out in pain as he fell onto the rocky floor writhing in pain, separate from his arm which was twitching somewhere further. Shimo lifted his sword up into the air and tried to finish the job by placing it right in between the mobster's eyes but the blasted idiot managed to place his knuckle duster in the way causing another shockwave to ripple through the mines. This one finished the job...
The entire mine was starting to collapse, the rippling shockwave passed through rock causing unrepairable damage to its integrity and sending crashing chunks of rock down on the two. Shimo's lightning fast reflexes and speed, as well as his instinct, lead him to evade the destruction of the mines, each rock was evaded by a leap to the side, each gigantic falling structure was dodged.
The Yuki didn't even try to run towards the elevator – it was too late for that, at that point the other mobsters would've been already out but it'd have taken too much time to lower the elevator again. Down to the belly of the beast was his only choice. Where was Meiko, where was Mana? Had they already leaped down there? Shimo did consider the fact that Meiko could screw that up, Mana may have been a complete idiot but she also was pretty crafty, however in this case... The blacksmith was right to fail her assignment so...
The stone floor crumbled, the entire mine caved in and fell onto the poor dwarf, Shimo wasn't there to see the man getting mangled and crushed, even if he wanted to as he was too busy leaping down himself. He evaded a couple of falling rocks even in mid-fall down to the lair of the Nine-Tails however... Eternal darkness once again took over when a large chunk of rock covered up the seemingly endless abyss of the crater made by the Nine-Tails. There was no way back... The only way forward was to face the Nine-Tails, or rather, try to sneak around its senseless rampage feasting on the lifeless carcasses of the other unfortunate miners and gangsters left below to feed the insatiable appetite of a beast left unattended for so long.
Shimo focused chakra into his feet, he made a couple of hand seals and breathed in.
"Water Style: Water Assault Jutsu!" he yelled out spitting a torrent of water from his mouth and then making another hand seal. "Glaciation Jutsu!" Shimo yelled out as the torrent solidified into a jet of ice for him to slide down on. It softened his landing so that he didn't splat down into a pancake upon reaching the bottom. He could only wonder if Mana had enough brain to have a way to somehow not splatter herself all over the bottom, maybe she and Meiko leaped down at the same time? That'd have saved the magician since the armored blacksmith had that weird chakra jet technique sealed into her boots that helped her fly around...
Shimo finally realized that he had reached the bottom as he was seeing a tough, rocky, and wet floor below. It was red from the blood and guts that covered it, however, most of it was so old that it could've been made at just about any point in the past. Shimo leaped down from the jet of ice he was sliding on and looked around. Mana always dragged him into those things but this may have just been the absolute worst thing she'd made him do... She picked a fight with the goddamn Nine-Tails.
"Why would she go pull the Nine-Tails' whiskers just to save that medical ninja? We can always just hire a Quack or something... If the opponent was anyone else I'd be with her, do my best to save my comrade but... The Nine-Tails... This is crazy even for Mana..." the boy kept thinking as his hand didn't move from the grip of his sword hilt. If the Nine-Tails attacked him it wouldn't have helped in the slightest but he liked to think that he could at least do something to defend himself. Made him feel less hopeless when he thought so...