Kouta, Shimo and Kusagoro continued to stare at Bonny who was still weeping over the loss of her sister. Truly after a lifetime of sharing a body and a mind this feeling of solitude and silence would’ve been unbearable for anyone. Loneliness was something that crippled even the strongest ones, even Kusagoro changed greatly after losing his comrades in the Wind Country desert. It granted him a desire for revenge, a purpose.
Bonny’s body disappeared, Shimo and Kouta’s eyes opened up in surprise as the boys struggled to breathe a single gasp of air in before they would’ve been stricken down by the woman. At this point there was nothing that they could’ve done, even without Read, Bonny possessed sufficiently replenished chakra level to finish off both of them without breaking a sweat, especially since Kouta’s lacking chakra level and inexperience made him lose his Curse Seal transformation straight after acquiring it.
Bonny’s body appeared back into the visions of the young men as her thrusting spiky arm was stopped by Kusagoro grabbing her wrist right up close to Kouta’s chest where it’d have penetrated the boy and pierced his heart with a single hand thrust. Bonny’s virus form wriggled and tried to escape Kusagoro’s grasp but the man appeared to be able to restrain the captain without much effort. The arm erupted in elongated spikes that attempted to penetrate the jounin’s hand but the armor shell just shattered into pieces revealing soft and fleshy glowing red scar tissue beneath it.
“Don’t touch my son!” Kusagoro cut it short as he slung the woman over his shoulder and slammed her into the ground with shocking strength, enough to crack the island open and cause violent quakes that reopened the earthly scars and made the lava gazers erupt again dancing in graceful yet searing hot arcs. It was as if Earth herself bled dry from just a brief introduction to Kusagoro’s strength.
Right after completing the slam Kouta’s father slammed Bonny to the other side cracking her shell open and causing the island ground to rupture again, water began rushing through the island’s cracks creating multiple smaller islands that would eventually be split and sent drifting aimlessly through the ocean from sheer water pressure or drown if they were unable to make their stand against the raging waves.
After completing to assert his total dominance over the remaining captain Kusagoro pulled the crushed and broken captain out from the ground flipping her into the air like a flappy pancake out of a pan. Bits and pieces of her spiky shell began to fall as the pair of slams she received were sufficiently powerful to completely crush the woman open like a shellfish fighting against a pneumatic press. Just as the battered Bonny would’ve hit the ocean water and likely drifted away to an unknown fate of solitude and silence Kusagoro’s kick right into the center of her back sent the captain flying aside to an island at the very least five thousand miles away cutting the oceans she was kicked through like an arrow cut air.
Kusagoro’s body blurred and disappeared flying aside his opponent appearing onto the island he sent her in an instant to only to slam his elbow to the flying by Bonny’s face and then driving her to the island floor with both of his hands in a double handed slam. The force completely demolished the entirety of Bonny’s armor and left her disabled and broken. It would’ve been impossible to tell if there was any life left in half of the pirate captain sisters but Kusagoro was a man taking no chances. His foot tightly stepped on the torn and busted scar tissue of the woman’s face as his hand morphed into a cannon aimed right at the ground beneath his feet.
“You’re a tough bitch, I’ll give you that, pirate. Let’s see you handle this… An attack matching the power of the largest dying stars, all focused and controlled to flow purely through your body so that you’re the only thing getting erased! Hell’s Wrath!” Kusagoro shouted out as his single aimed cannon emitted a powerful white beam that created a flash of light temporarily blinding people on the other side of the world as the island the two were in got completely disintegrated into nothingness.
The blast of the attack erupted underground into multiple smaller beams that all shot out and left the Earth’s orbit creating beacons of light. The ancient legends told of people living on the Moon, if that was true even they would’ve been terrified of those blinding flashes of light passing through their little homeworld into the oblivion of cold and dead space. After the dust cleared out Kusagoro just sighed and flew back to the island in a blink of an eye right back to his son and his friend.
Kouta and Shimo had already begun rushing towards the pyramid with Kouta dragging the weak Meiko along. Kusagoro blinked in nearby the two as if he was never gone to begin with slowing his unbelievable speed so that it matched that of the young ones.
“You killed her?” Kouta asked coldly.
“So the pot developed a sense of morality against the kettle?” Kusagoro smiled carelessly.
The ninja carefully leaped over the fissures that were separating the jungle island into separate islands. It was hard to believe that even completely restrained power could cause such aftermaths, ninja were warriors of subtlety, a single chunin may have been strong enough to strike with world breaking strength but they always controlled their might so it only affected their target and never the world around them. A powerful ninja hit with the power of Gods and yet not a sign of their presence was seen to testify the presence of a ninja, to think that even with such restraint and control the power that Kusagoro possessed still caused such immense destruction…
“I gave you a blue food pill. Your friends can have some orange ones…” Kusagoro said nonchalantly looking at his son with a moderate sense of pride towards the young man. Even in his wildest dreams the jounin couldn’t have imagined seeing his son show such potential while being tested by his father’s cruel ways.
“I was fine, I could’ve been good with the red one. Shimo’s injuries are more severe, he could’ve used the blue one, or Meiko, she almost got killed!” Kouta grunted out angrily at his father. “We already explained this to you, father, me and mom: the blue one is the most powerful one, it heals any wounds without compensating any chakra back like the black one, the green one is good enough for a single dangerous wound, the orange one is elementary battlefield patching and the red one is for small wounds and bruises”
“I know, still, you’re the one I care even remotely about…” Kusagoro shrugged, “Anyways, I heard you guys were travelling with an Uchiha” he added.
“It’s my old sensei” Shimo interrupted Kusagoro’s impending question.
“I see, so not the man from the desert then…” the jounin snapped his fingers in regret.
“No, I don’t know what happened to scaredy-sensei anyways, knowing him he bailed on us the moment this island began to fall apart…” Shimo remarked angrily looking at the sky while he cracked a food pill and handed another one to Meiko.
“You guys should ease up, one can’t just fight for days on end by just eating food pills! Your hearts would give up on you. It’s a temporary solution, not a second round measure” Kouta warned as Shimo felt up his gaping hole wound that was beginning to close up from the pill. It was likely that wound alone would consume all the beneficiary effects of the pill alone.
“So are you here to kill Mana again?” Meiko whined out with a weak voice as her eyes opened and fell onto Kouta’s father.
“Not really, I’m kinda ordered to bring you kids back home. The village is worried because the boss lady hasn’t received a report from you in weeks, some of the old farts in the council thought you may have gone rogue… Knowing that magician wench I wouldn’t have been surprised” Kusagoro shook his head looking on ahead at the pyramid in front of him.
“Stop calling Mana-chan that! She’s a strong and loyal person, she’d never pull something like that nor would she drag us into something as reckless as that!” Kouta shouted out at his father angrily.
Kusagoro smiled.
“That girl is really good for you, you’d have never yelled at your old man before. Also this mission lead to improvements both to your girly healing skills and your ability to throw a punch. I’d have never thought you’d achieve the first stage of the Curse Seal in your entire lifetime, knowing how puny you were and yet you leaped such insane bounds in these couple of months it’s tough to believe…” Kusagoro admitted with his eyes closed as if he was ashamed of his pride in his own son.
“Wait, did you just compliment your son?” Shimo wondered, “Now I have seen everything…”
While Kouta’s face suggested some embarrassment over being praised by his father for the first time in forever, in public, nevertheless, the young man remained quiet and simply looked on ahead. They weren’t too far from the pyramid anyways.
*****
Mana made her way down the pyramid staircase and sat down against it. Hopelessly she dragged her hands stroking her sticky dark hair and forcing it behind her back instead of its usual messy state. So this was it then? She was unable to interact with the Box and save her friends because the Box needed this one thing she wished to gain back in order to work? Mana closed her eyes and let her mind linger away almost like it used to when she meditated.
“Please… Just this once… I know that the spiritual chakra is everything I lack, I know that you’re keeping me away from it because I’m being reckless with it but… Just this once… Please…” Mana begged her own body to let her use the spiritual aspect of chakra that was shut down from her. Her own mind trapped Mana’s identity within a prison of its own making. Just how twisted and cruel was that? To live within the prison of one’s own mind and knowing that you’re your own worst enemy. To have to search the whole world through and through just to avoid having to deal with one’s own inner demons?
“You’re not gonna help, huh?” Mana’s busted lips twisted into a weak smile as her eyes remained closed and her mind kept floating as if in another plane entirely. “That’s why you won’t help “ because you feel betrayed and hurt after realizing that I’d rather look for some wish fulfilment artifact that talk to my own body…” the magician spoke to herself realizing her own mistake.
“The thing is that I’m not the one at stake here… Meiko, Shimo and Kouta are! Hachiro-san too…” Mana tried to reason with her own body so that her hidden spiritual chakra side would be unlocked. It was to no avail, her own body stayed silent and closed off from Mana. It was like talking to a capricious child or a difficult teen, once they’ve figured out they’ve been lied to they’ll shut off and won’t talk to you again.
Suddenly Mana felt something being forced down her throat and a violent slap at her cheek. The magician’s mind snapped out of the procession into a deep meditational stage and back into reality seeing Meiko leaning over her and having forced a food pill down Mana’s throat.
“You had to make her crack the pill with her teeth, Meiko…” Kouta rubbed his forehead in annoyance to the redhead’s ignorance with first aid.
Mana coughed as her throat was annoyed with the large pill and upchucked it back to where she actually chewed it up. It tasted like seaweed that had spent months in old soy sauce, smelled sort of like that too. The magician licked her lips and tried summoning some saliva to wash away the weird taste out of her mouth but it was stuck there. Still, she could appreciate the pill helping her wounds even if she wasn’t sure where this medical resource had come from.
“Yo!” Kusagoro awkwardly raised his hand up introducing himself to Mana, the magician jumped up and began backing up in fear of the man that almost killed her multiple times but then realized that her friends were both alive and completely unalarmed by the man’s presence which meant that there must’ve been something she did not know.
“Don’t worry, Mana-chan, dad isn’t here to kill us or anything… He’s here to bring us back home but he won’t care if he does it now or a bit later after we get what we came here for. We thought you’d have evacuated like Hachiro once the islands began to split… Finding you here took some time” Kouta tried calming Mana down and switching the topic away from his father and his deeds in the past.
This was the first time that Mana had heard about something happening to this island, Mana looked around and witnessed the island being shattered into hundreds of smaller islands all of which slowly drifted apart as the shifting waters that began seeping in between the landmasses started breaking them off and drifting them away. The magician wanted to wonder who may have done this but… It was almost obvious it must’ve been Kusagoro, then again, the food pills that made her friends look almost in fighting shape must’ve also come from him as well.
“I’m grateful you helped my friends” Mana awkwardly bowed her head for the man in gratitude. It looked like the tall warrior was not used to such courtesy as he just scratched the back of his head.
“Oh, well, you know… I didn’t break my back or anything…” he tried figuring out how exactly he was supposed to be nice to a girl whose guts he kind of hated but who helped his son grow which automatically meant he wanted her around.
“You most definitely didn’t…” Shimo squinted angrily at the man.
“Anyways, Mana, why didn’t you activate the Box, I hope it wasn’t because that whole “I promised you’d get to hold it in your hands” thing…” Meiko asked Mana looking at the busted up pyramid and her friend with great worry and care.
“It’s a bit larger than I thought so… That part may be troublesome” Mana smiled but then her face got back to sad again, “No, it was because it needs some chakra to set off whatever seals are placed on it… I’m so useless I can’t even take my goal once it’s right in front of me” the magician looked away completely crushed by her own disability.
“Oh, well… We’re all here, aren’t we?” Kouta smiled.
“What happened to the sisters?” Mana asked, her eyes still carried a small speck of hopeful flares that maybe the pirate captains were still alive and her plan wasn’t a total failure.
“Oh…” Kouta looked at his father awkwardly realizing what he had to tell the magician. The young man she promised to give a shot at dating her and his father just killed someone “ someone dangerous and yet still they did a thing she hated most of all. It’d have really put a shaky start to a relationship. Kusagoro looked at his son curiously wondering why did his boy have such trouble owning the fact he beat the enemy. With such amazing transformation, no less! If it was Kusagoro’s victory achieving the first stage of the hidden Jugo power he’d own up to that all the way through!
“I killed them both!” Shimo declared out of the blue. “There was no other way. They were too strong, Kusagoro’s appearance bought us some time and I used that chance, have a problem with that?” he rubbed it into Mana’s face completely shifting the black mark away.
Kusagoro’s face began undergoing some weird transformations, the man struggled to comprehend the complicated social processes that transpired but looking at Kouta’s strangely alleviated face he realized that it was best for his son’s case if he kept his mouth shut and didn’t declare the swordsman a liar.
“Well… I’m sure you did your best to find another way” Mana replied trying to hide away her disappointment. It wasn’t a disappointment in her friends, it was self-loathing. The feeling of pathetic self-pity that made Mana hate her own guts for coming up with this plan that almost lead to her friends dying and made her trick a pirate captain and her crew only for things to lead up for the pirates to getting killed.
“Wait… So you used a pirate crew to sail you here and then killed them? Holy shit, that’s some real ninja work!” Kusagoro whistled after finally getting the hang of things that happened. “Shit, girly, you’re gonna get promoted, sure as fuck, that’s ruthless as all hells! I mean, if you straighten the whole powerless situation…” he added which only made Mana feel worse about herself. This whole trip revealed so much to the magician about herself and her own incompetence that she was beginning to doubt her own worth of even acquiring her identity back.
“Yeah…” she uttered lifelessly standing back on her feet and beginning to walk towards the edge of the island that the team was standing on. A small stretch of land surrounding the pyramid.
“Wait up, Mana, what about the Box!?” Meiko shouted out.
“Lift it, hold it in your hands… I promised you that much. I don’t want it, I don’t need it. I don’t deserve it” Mana replied waving her hand back after sitting at the edge of the island and letting her ruined sandals submerge into the bloody and foamy sea water below her feet.
“Wait, what!? It’s yours! Stop acting like a child and claim your wish!” Shimo shouted out angrily walking up to Mana and grabbing the magician by her collar. The young man began dragging her towards the pyramid against her will.
“Do you really need this in your life?” Kusagoro stretched out carelessly while turning at his son. “Your mother is a lot like that too, it’s why I spend so little time at home” he smiled as if he was describing something to be proud in.
Shimo began dragging Mana up the stairs as the magician kicked and wailed around trying to land a blow or get out of her friend’s grip she may as well have been stuck in the gravity field of a black hole. Shimo didn’t even budge and it only made her knuckles hurt.
“Take this wish, it’s YOURS!” he shouted as his hand reached for the black exposed corner of the box ready to activate the seal.
A violent explosion sent Shimo and Mana away from the pyramid as it cracked open and several more structural pieces collapsed revealing more and more of the Box before the entire construction fell to bits revealing the Box in its glory. The skies became dark and thunderbolts started lighting up the night’s sky, the bolts of purple light, the lightning of evil chakra surrounding the Box being unearthed once more.
The magician landed in Shimo’s grasp as he wrapped himself around her covering the fall and protecting Mana from any shrapnel or wild wandering bricks from crushing her after they slid away. In the visible horizon a colossal ship was approaching the island from the other side blasting right through the smaller islands, one of the cannon blasts must’ve hit the pyramid sending the young ninja down on the ground.
Mana looked at the ship and the black sail that carried the symbol of a large chunk of meat wrapped around a bone horizontally to the mouth of a skull that was tearing a large chunk off of it. The ship was dyed red and was at least twelve times larger and better armed than that of Bonny’s. In the presence of such a juggernaut the surviving members of Bonny’s crew must’ve quickly fled for their lives if they could still manage sailing a ship.
Pirate Lord “Red” “ Akimichi Francho came to claim the treasure promised to him by a message in a bottle he had intercepted.
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