Deep in meditation, Maya's face was contorted. After a long moment she wiped the cold sweat from her brow and said, calm as anything, "Master—the horse is inside the walls of Troy. Let's move to the next phase of the plan."
"Good disciple," Stick said weakly, "your master's about done for. But the Trojan horse is in—so make do, and go over there yourself, in the flesh."
"Master, you're the one who told me: a gentleman doesn't linger beneath a leaning wall. The horse may be inside the city, but there's no guaranteeing that Warren hasn't got other cards to play. Going myself is out. This calls for another Shadow Clone. Quick—channel me a little more qi. Heh heh. Who'd have thought this world would let me pull this off? I get to feel what Boruto felt!" Maya said, hurrying her master along.
There's a scene in Naruto where Naruto's son Boruto gets carried—flexed—into battle on the backs of his old man and his "mom." Boruto's Rasengan can turn invisible; Sasuke and Naruto pour their own chakra into Boruto, and the little ball in his hand swells on the spot to the size of a house.
Which had gotten Maya thinking. Her own chakra was thin enough that a couple of Shadow Clones drained it dry—so why not take a leaf out of Boruto's book?
And, wonder of wonders, it hadn't let her down. Stick's qi was pure beyond compare, and once funneled into Maya's body it truly did convert into pale-gold chakra. This chakra couldn't be stored—it had to be spent right then and there—but spending it on the spot, casting Shadow Clones, was the whole point. And so Stick became Maya's personal power bank. Even with two Shadow Clones already deployed, Maya's reserves stayed brimming. To put it in game terms: Maya was chugging health potions mid-fight, full HP, full MP, grinding poor doomed Warren into paste.
"Hurry, Master—my Ninja Master persona just got taken out too! Scarlet Witch is the one holding the line now, and we're running out of time!"
Maya barked it out—another Shadow Clone had just been blown apart. That one had used the swordwork Maya had only recently picked up, dressed in the blue Leaf vest, running mainly the "Konoha's White Fang" playbook.
(Author's note: for anyone who hasn't seen Naruto — Konoha's White Fang is Kakashi's father, a ninja renowned for his skill with a blade.)
Stick could only sigh and give in. His disciple was, after all, defending world peace—wasn't she? He had to back her up. So he pressed both palms to Maya's back once more.
Out at the ruins of the Old Punk Hotel, the fight raged on.
Watching the black tentacles writhing and snapping behind the woman across from him, Warren hunched down, panting, and cursed. "Kaff—kaff— damn you. What kind of Scarlet Witch is this? You're a shadow-demon, that's what you are. This god-forsaken world—what in creation does it keep spitting out? This old man must have been blind to pick this Earth—gah—ssschunk—"
Another Shadow Sewing strike caught Warren in the chest, and the luckless Traveler promptly heaved up a mouthful of blood.
Ting-ting, clang-clang.
Warren's body dissolved into a strung-out chain of afterimages—from a distance he seemed to hang everywhere in the air at once. Against the black tentacles pouring in from every side, these many Warrens swung their kunai, shearing off one after another of the blades tucked in among the tendrils.
And Maya, at this point—she'd used the Transformation Technique and gone without a mask, only raising her height to 170 centimeters (5'7"), dressed in Jennifer's fiery-red dress, two meters (6½ feet) of scarlet hair streaming and dancing in the air.
After the several savage rounds already fought here, most of the ruin's flames had guttered out; only a thick, heavy pall of smoke and dust drifted through it. Lit from far off by the surrounding firelight, the broken walls and the stumps of the old foundation looked all the more shadowed and strange.
The Shadow Clone calling itself Scarlet Witch, member of the Stark Superhero Squad, felt not the slightest discomfort—she didn't need to breathe, and her sight wasn't blocked by any of it. Behind her, dense ranks of black shadow-tendrils reached out, and these, like her serpentine hair, coiled and drifted in the air.
Ground, mid-air, high overhead, even up out of the cracks splitting the earth—from every angle at once she pressed the attack on Warren, and now and then a shadow-tendril would come carrying a kunai and take a sneaky little jab or two.
If any of the Nara clan had been there to see it, they'd have dropped to their knees and called her ancestor—so completely had Maya pushed the Shadow Secret Techniques to their absolute limit.
Had the Shadow Sewing hit just a bit harder, or had Warren been anything like a normal man, he'd have died N times over in that first wave. As it was, the very first time Warren met this eerie technique, the Shadow Imitation Technique locked his body up solid—only for two short seconds, but in those two seconds at least a hundred shadow-tendrils came slamming home right behind it, into his heart, his temples, every fatal point he had. (And—a note in passing—seeing as Warren was a man, Maya made sure his groin wasn't spared either.)
In short, Traveler Warren was knocked down to a sliver of HP on the spot, and the sheer wretchedness and agony of it can well be imagined—a bystander would've shed a tear of pure sympathy.
But in this rotten world of ours, the contest was never about strength. It was about who had the bigger cheat.
Even with all Maya's heavy artillery brought to bear, there was simply no cracking a man who held a divine artifact!
Scheme a thousand ways, wield ten thousand tricks—none of it beats a player with the god-tier gear set.
Warren wasn't a player and had no god-tier set. He'd simply gotten absurdly lucky and pulled the Eye of Watoomb.
As the magic within the Eye of Watoomb came flooding back into him, Warren was restored to full mana all over again—and for a mage, once you've got mana, are you ever really short on HP? That was why Warren, riddled with N grievous wounds, was still hopping around good as new.
The countless figures in the air went whip-whip-whip, folding and turning, and at last merged back into one, resolving into Warren's smug old face. "Ha! I've seen through your trick. From here on out, not one of your attacks will touch me! You can't move. Your single strikes are weak. Heh. I am the Traveler of space and time. I can step back a few seconds—or leap a few seconds ahead."
At that he brandished the pale-blue kunai and roared: "Insect! You lowly, base little creature—to think you've made the noble Sir Traveler suffer wounds like these. Today I'll use your own comrade's blade to lop off that dog's head of yours—and I'll carve your skull into a wine-cup and keep it in my storehouse forever!"
Maya said nothing. She only stood there, staring blankly, her long hair spilling down—and the octopus-thicket of shadow-tendrils behind her flickered, guttered, and at last dissolved away into nothing.
"I…" Maya said, dazed, getting out a single word.
CRACK—BANG! Scarlet Witch's head slid from her shoulders and dropped onto the white-smoking rubble.
SPLURT!
Blood sprayed from her severed neck—and Maya's fourth disguise, the Scarlet Witch, was beheaded and done.
"Ha ha ha! I told you, didn't I? I saw straight through the flaw in your little secret art—that crawling, sluggish footwork! Ha! A stubby-legged thing like you, daring to stand against the Traveler of space and time. Ignorance!" Traveler Warren threw back his head and laughed.
"Hey. Warren. That's four of my companions you've killed today. Mr. Stark is very displeased—so he's sent me over to finish you off." The voice was lazy, listless, thoroughly unbothered.
"Who? Who's there?"
Warren whipped around—and there, on a broken chunk of fourth-floor wall, hunched and squatting on the stone, was a bald man in red gloves, red boots, a red cape, and a blue skin-tight suit.
"One punch. One punch is all it takes to finish you. Call me—One-Punch Man!"