A sound of disturbing kitchen noises woke Mana up. She was the only one willing to share a room in an inn with Hachiro, the others appeared either untrusting or unwilling to sleep anywhere near the same room as if the man was made of plague. Meiko however, despite her lack of desire to share a room with the man slept close to Mana and Hachiro just because she wanted to watch the man and keep him from pulling something dangerous on them. The blacksmith wasn't too devoted to the cause though as she got knocked out by the Sandman and remained in that state until the morning. Not even the countless rustles Hachiro made through the night could as much as make her wiggle her nose.
Mana's tired eyes examined the room, her heart was not as troubled as it once was. Naturally the girl was afraid of being in danger the first couple of times she was woken up, now it was just annoying. Finally the magician's lazy and floaty eyesight fixed on Hachiro standing by the window and drinking yet another glass of milk. For a man powerful enough to hold his own against their entire team the Uchiha sure was paranoid. Mana was the only one of the group to take his ramblings seriously and as such she didn't get mad at him for pulling this sort of thing, at first, at least...
"Is something wrong?" she whispered, without a worry of waking Meiko up who was sitting near her bed and guarding the magician like a guard dog. Despite being in a rather intimidating protective position Meiko's head was cocked back all the way and she was drooling all over her chubby cheeks while the blacksmith slept like a baby.
"It's just... I thought I heard someone talking outside..." Hachiro smiled, at least Mana thought he did. A sharp stench of sweat stabbed at her nose revealing that the man may have been playing brave while his own body played games on him.
"I don't think there's anything to worry about, when you open the fridge the light is flashing right into my eyes..." Mana tried to tell the man she was becoming very annoyed by having to wake up every five minutes because he had to drink some milk or place some ice cubes into his glass.
"Do you think I have inflammation of the pancreas, girl? I feel kind of nauseous..." the man wondered after looking back through the window.
"No, I don't think so. It's no wonder you're nauseous, you've drank at least six glasses of milk so far, maybe it just gone bad?" Mana wondered flipping onto the other side to try and sleep up. It was a possibility that she'd be sleeping on a ship the next night and that meant she may have not slept too good, the magician had never been on a ship before and new sensations were a poor catalyst for sleepy nights.
"Oh it is bad... I wouldn't drink good milk, no one would slip in poison into bad milk, I mean why would they, no one drinks it..." Hachiro mumbled to himself. "I want to pee, can you maybe go to the bathroom with me and guard the door?" the man asked.
"I won't. There's no such thing as a shit-goblin, or any other sort of goblin for that matter, I'm sure Shimo told you this plenty of times before... No one watches the inn bathrooms, they're not public" Mana grunted a little more aggressively than she'd have wanted.
"Oh... Okay..." Hachiro replied as if her answer disappointed him and shaking as if he was heading towards certain doom he began heading towards the door. His voice was whiny and overwhelmed like that of a baby being told that he was responsible for filling in the taxes for the whole family and that he won't get any ice cream until he does.
A grunt came from under Mana's cover, the girl flipped her cover off and jumped out of her bed.
"Fine... I'll watch the door..." she replied annoyed.
*****
It was tough to say just who made Mana wish to break her no killing rule more – Hachiro with his paranoid waking up routine or Shimo with his declaration of moving out. The scaredy Uchiha was already waiting by the door by the time Shimo banged on it and ran out immediately after the young ninja woke everyone up. Mana could barely peel her head off the pillow. She felt sorry for her own miserable and sleepy face when she examined it in the mirror. After Hachiro left Mana began changing out of her PJs since if she decided to snooze for one more minute she'd have gone right back asleep.
"So what's our plan? Are we gonna wait for a strong pirate crew to dock or are we gonna try and bump into it in the seas?" Kouta wondered after the whole morning routine was concluded and the breakfast was finished. Hachiro sadly said goodbye with the ryo coins he paid for the room and the breakfast as they left his hand. For some reason the man wanted to pay for the rooms and the food, Mana wanted to believe it was because she was as nice to him as it was humanly possible to be with such a man but she couldn't have been sure. With this man one could've never been sure...
"Well, we may as well wait for years until a strong pirate crew docks here. I mean technically the central port town does have the highest chance of seeing a pirate ship dock here for supplies and cheap accommodation but still... Pirates often spend the whole year in the seas" Shimo thought out loud. "I say we hire a weakling ship any stupid pirate with a kitchen knife could capture and lure a crew in, then hit them with our parley and beat their shits in if they don't agree"
"Didn't everyone tell us not to underestimate the pirates? Weren't they like crazy strong?" Meiko wondered to herself still munching on some snacks she snagged from the inn.
"Every pirate from the captain of the crew to the deck scrubber are at least as strong as a good genin ninja. They'd never survive out in the seas otherwise..." Hachiro repeated what he told them yesterday.
"Well if we sail out then we run into the risk of having our ship blown up before we can parley even. What are the guarantees that the pirates won't just blow us up, or that they won't just beat us, rob us and leave us for the dead in the middle of the ocean? They rule the seas so bargaining with them in the middle of their dominion is the dumbest decision we can make" Kouta provided his point of view, the team looked at Mana who just yawned and scratched her eyes with a knuckle before licking an unruly string of her messy bed hair back in its place.
"Mana?" Shimo asked for her opinion.
The magician sighed. "I don't know... I don't think I'm in any condition to be the swing voter here" she admitted.
"Well, in that case if we can't find a crew today, we'll set sail first thing tomorrow" Kouta suggested a compromise.
"That sounds reasonable enough, we've no luxury to wait around indefinitely" Shimo agreed.
"Yeah, I need to get to the Archipelago as fast as possible!" Hachiro reminded everyone despite everyone's general disinterest in the man's agenda.
"Hachiro-san, didn't you plan on asking a pirate crew to take you there? Didn't you have a deal of some sort before coming here?" Mana wondered.
"Yes, those young whippersnappers that got their butts beaten and tossed into the water were my plan..." the Uchiha admitted.
"Wow... You're just... You're just the worst at life" Shimo scratched his eyes angrily.
"I've never imagined it being this hard to find someone willing enough to do something for more money than they can spend..." Mana sighed before yawning again only for her open mouth to be slapped closed by a woman in a long blue coat standing right in front of her.
"Did someone mention money?" the woman smiled flicking her pompous black hat and letting some of her eye-gougingly ginger hair to flow out from under it. She was a relatively young lady, maybe just a couple of years older than Mana and yet her clothing suggested high social status and a possible already pre-existing possession of more money than one could spend. She was short, shorter than Hachiro and Shimo and almost as short as Mana, her skin was also almost as dark as Mana's except it wasn't because of natural causes – the woman was just tanned.
"We need to get to the middle of Tako's Reach as soon as possible, we're willing to pay enough to buy you a mansion" Mana's sleepiness instantly went away after the magician realized that she was standing in front of a potential solution.
"Strange you just happened to bump into us, lady, and with a proposition and willingness to work with us..." Shimo suspiciously mentioned squinting at the short, aristocratic looking, young lady.
"I may have heard from some of my subordinates that they've been beaten up and about a bunch of snotty kids looking for a sail and throwing money around... Tell you what, we blow this fucking town to the crapper and we can set sail for a million ryo or twenty" the woman smiled with her hat slipping on top of the woman's face as her crimson red dyed lips twisted into a smile. The way she held herself and spoke suggested not only power and influence but also a pirate status.
"Subordinates?" Mana wondered, "You mean those kids that got beaten up yesterday and tossed into the sea? They work for you?"
"Didn't you know, ninja girl? The life out there in the seas is just the same, here ninja answer to the Kage who dance for the Feudal Lords, out there pirates all answer to their captains who in term obey the three Pirate Lords. There is not a single captain out there not answering to one of them. Together they govern the triangle of the seas called the Tako's Reach" the woman explained "The Eight Tails sometimes drags a crew down under into its tentacle locker, I suppose you could say the old horn-head is a chaotic-neutral de facto Pirate Lord too"
A bunch of men laughed walking out from the alleyways around the team. Mana shook her head and stepped out from behind her team in front of the blue wearing woman.
"I'll pay extra if we depart immediately. I'll pay double if you seek no satisfaction from this town and leave it standing. I imagine you've a reputation of a ruthless pirate lady to uphold but I hope the money you'd make out of it would quench and compensate your bitterness of not burning this town to the ground" Mana removed the bag off Shimo's back and unzipped it showing it to the woman. Upon seeing the purplish glow from inside the bag the pirate lady's eyes shimmered with greed. She pulled a sword out that shot up in the blueish chakra colored imbuement and rose up to Mana's neck to where it touched a throbbing vein.
Shimo and Meiko prepared to attack, Mana had no doubts that the two could break the woman's face after her brain issues the command to cut Mana's throat open but before it is done. Even if she was fast and skilled, her hand was occupied with an executing motion which would've granted her team an advantage in this first exchange of blows.
"Tell me one reason why I shouldn't kill you, blow this town up and then just take your bag and sail into the sunset" the woman smiled, her eyes had no bloodlust in it, they were almost testing Mana just to see how the girl's guts worked.
"You could, you could even kill my team in an outright brawl, I'd bet. However your losses would hardly be reasonable. I've no chakra control and I've survived the Sun Disc arena in Agbarah, my team may not be strong enough to beat you but they'd thin your ranks up just enough to leave too few men to sail fast enough to outrun any marine hunter-nin vessels chasing you. You'd have all the money in the world and yet they wouldn't buy your head back on your shoulders" Mana replied calmly, while she did maintain a poker face at all times her heart was pounding and blood was rushing so intensely that the girl thanked the fate that she could barely comprehend the situation she was in due to her sleepiness.
The blue chakra flare went out and the pirate lady sheathed her blade. Her expensive blue coat with golden weavings and buttons jingled and rustled as her hand raised for a shake to conclude the deal.
"Shit, you're the kid that was in Agbarah? Old fart Cheng said he saw you in the coliseum, he would love to meet you no doubt. You're a strong little lady, I like that. We ass kicking women need to look out for one another, I'll take you up on your deal and charge you hundred-fifty percent for it, consider it as a fifty percent off offer... Just hand us thirty million ryo or... Twenty seven shards now and the same after the trip" the woman said as her men looked at her questioning her devotion to this new plan she made.
Mana unzipped the bag and calculated the shards in front of the woman giving it to a tough looking carrying mule she sent out of her crew of pirates. Looking at the lot of pirates she lead it was tough to imagine each one of the small-timers being worth as much as Hachiro swore they were worth. They looked no different from weakling bandits but apparently each lowlife there was able of beating down a trained low ranking ninja all by themselves.
"Hey, Read, what the fuck!? Do you think Ollonais is gonna stand for you dragging his reputation through the mud bargaining with a bunch of kids? What message does it send the ungrateful port fu..." one of the pirates spoke up but before he could conclude his sentence a sword plunged his chest coming out from the back of the pirate lady's coat as if she had hands out there. The odd thing was that both of the lady's hands were stuck out and dealing with Mana.
"I can tolerate young ambitious studs wanting to match swords and wits with me, what I can't stand is insolent little fucks referring to a Pirate Lord by name as if they're beer guzzling buddies..." she spoke out coldly as the man collapsed to the ground. Mana looked in complete awe – if these men were all rogue ninja that meant they had chakra augmentation, similar or greater degree of it that genin had. Mana saw Kiyomi protect herself from Hisako's stab using it once, accelerating the chakra flow to such an extent that it created a force field like presence and made one's skin seem impenetrable...
How refined this woman's chakra control and sword mastery should've been for it to completely bypass that man's chakra augmentations as if he had none at all? Even if his perceptions were outsmarted or simply slacking he'd have still had instinctual augmentations that were wasteful but even more powerful. Not only did this woman possess chakra mastery impressive enough to coat her blade in chakra on her will as if it was an extension of her body but it also pierced right through augmentations.
It was evident that the rest of Mana's team was just as impressed by the woman's display of speed and power. A stab like that could've broken even through Audra imbued skin or any substance or flesh lacking chakra properties, no matter how invincible and dense.
"Oh well... Ruined my favorite coat now with that sword hole..." the woman smiled at Mana grabbing the magician by the girl's elbow as if the two were classmates and gesturing for the magician's team to follow.
"That was..." Mana began to speak up but stopped in the middle of the sentence. She was genuinely afraid to finish that sentence because the speed and power of this woman literally tore to shreds any notes and ideas the magician had of how powerful ninja could get, she could've listened to tales of how the Justicar swings blinked out entire star systems from Shimo but seeing this down to Earth feat of precision and finesse left her more in awe than any degree of senseless destruction ever could.
"Impressive? Well, it's my sister – Bonny... We're sort of stuck together, you see" the woman laughed out "My name's Becky Read, I'm a captain of my own crew and a proud vassal of Pirate Lord "Green" – Hideo l'Ollonais" the woman began casually chatting to Mana ignoring the magician's bitter expression she couldn't help but wear after seeing a man casually get murdered in a single meaningless moment in time.
"Ruthless, actually..." the magician replied.
"Oh well, you know, back before Kirigakure Black Ops beheaded him the Pirate Lord of the last generation "Black" Soba Teach used to say "Insolence today is a mutiny tomorrow". He ran a tight ship and was never betrayed. All of his crew went down with him, I sometimes wonder if his old head doesn't look too wrinkly and doesn't reek too bad on the Mizukage's trophy stand? The bastard must be wondering if the smell is worth the honor of hanging those greyed out, once raven black locks on his stand" the woman nonchalantly dismissed Mana's remark, she appeared to take offense less strictly from people who were doing business with her instead of her own crew. The image of strength and unwavering loyalty must've been the core values amongst the scourge of the seas.
An awkward silence reigned as the magician's team was walked aboard Read's ship and showed around and lead into their quarters. Bonny must've been quite the socialite as she was adamant to break that silence, asking Mana a bunch of questions about her trip and the time in the Sun Disc arena. The magician went into more detail about the arena so that she stuffed time and details into things that she had the luxury of going into more detail about and moved the attention away from the things she'd have rather kept secret. The last thing Mana wanted was the Pirate Lords declaring war on one another and the world for the Box of Ultimate Bliss.
"I'm just a history fanatic, I love reading all about the lore, legends and myths of this world as well as real history. That's why I want to see Tako's Reach" was all that Mana told Read about that subject.
"Oh, you love history? Boy do I have tales for you!" Read shrieked like a shopaholic let into the mall during a sale.
"They do sound interesting but I'll have to ask you to reserve them for dinner, I've had very little sleep today so I'd like to make up for that..." Mana admitted honestly.
Read's face got strict and stone cold as her hands clapped emitting a thud that only two bulls clashing with one another at full speed could've let out.
"The man who wakes this young woman up will lose his fingers and the middle one's going up their arsehole!" she shouted out from the top of the captain's deck to her crew and asked for someone to show Mana to her quarters. One of the rough looking brawling types rather gently lead Mana to a small but pretty expensive looking room that looked compact but had all the necessities as well as some more luxuriously sounding objects especially in the sea.
"We'll set sail once we get some supplies, and refill our stocks. The captain wished to assure you she'll be buying them and not looting, honestly plundering ports isn't very praised by Lord "Green" anyways..." the pirate spoke the first and possibly the last words he'd speak to Mana and left her alone in her quarters.
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