After looking at the standstill of Kusagoro and the Pirate Lord weighing each other and measuring their opponent, comparing them to themselves, Mana couldn’t help but glance sideways at the fully exposed and shining with malevolent and twisted chakra Box of Ultimate Bliss. Occasionally a pair of purple thunderbolts interrupted her train of thought and made her snap back into the frozen world of reality.
“What’s wrong?” Kouta asked Mana noticing her turn at the Box one too many times for it to be dismissed as being normal.
“I need to use it…” she uttered. “Before your father gets hurt, before it all gets even worse, before I somehow screw it all up even more. The Box needs to be used, then Red will have no more reason to be here” she whimpered out in desperation.
“Don’t be foolish, the Pirate Lord will kill us with even more focus and hatred if we squander the Box away. If you activate it and try to use it, there’s no telling who’ll speak their wish out first. We’re still not sure how this Box works but as long as an enemy of this scale is present it may not be smart to activate it” Shimo cut Mana down before placing his hand on her shoulder. “I know you want everyone to make out of here and you feel it’s somehow your fault, you always think that way but now our best course of action is to hope that Kouta’s messed up father can kick this guy’s ass hard and far enough for him to be as far away from here as possible”
“So you’re gonna use the Box?” Meiko curiously got her hopes up as her saddened and feeling for her friends lips finally tipped sideways in a manner somewhat resembling a smile while her cheekbones protruded like a hilt of a concealed sword under cloth.
“No. You’re just going to touch it, like I promised you, and we’re heading home, mission complete, the Box’s location confirmed… The world is better off with me staying the way I am” Mana shook her head still staring at the ruined ground beneath her feet.
Kusagoro finally leaped directly at his opponent, he did not try and employ any typical ninja fighting methods like trying to scope his opponent from a longer range or hiding “ if he got out of Red’s vision there’d be nothing standing in between Red and the young ones. The Pirate Lord needed to know that Kusagoro was a persistent pain up his ass as long as the long haired beardo continued to mess with his mission.
The jounin decided to scope his opponent’s strength out, give him a single powerful punch to the gut, not focused and unchained enough to slow him down but without any conscious effort of holding back. An actual strong and tensed muscle blow. Kusagoro was pleasantly surprised when his punch dove deep into the beer and rum belly of the Pirate Lord lifting his huge body off the ground slightly and making the man slobber up.
With quick precise blows that had much less force and focus but more speed behind them the ex-ANBU operative tried picking his opponent off, wear him out for a heavy finishing blow at the end of his attacking string. While the Pirate Lord did take damage from Kusagoro’s blow, even spat up blood suggesting internal injury from the get-go, the fact that the man’s body did not explode into fleshy bits slightly alarmed the Konoha veteran. A punch of such intensity could’ve accomplished wonders, killed chuunin or weaker jounin ninja with a single blurry and almost invisible shot. Dozens of times more than it took to break a world to rocky shatters, leave nothing but space dust of an entire planet and yet all it did for this oversized hobo was make him bleed.
Akimichi Francho covered up his face and tensed his immense belly up, Kusagoro’s blows landed, his roaring as they cut speed of pierced air, raced light itself combinations of blows bombarded the pirate’s defenses bouncing off of the man’s body without leaving much permanent damage. Just bruises, blunt trauma and small bumps. No fractures, no crunched up to porridge organs or a bloody symphony of a weakling’s body exploding from the pressure of chakra transferred through their body surpassing their own many times over. Then all of a sudden Francho took a punch to the jaw twisting his face to the side and losing a couple of teeth and a squirt of blood enough to fill a sake cup.
At the same time the man’s hand reached for his sides pulling out one of his massive handcannons that were many times more massive than any cannon any ship Kusagoro had seen carrying. This man was a walking heavy cavalry all by himself. Francho, still dazed and overwhelmed by Kusagoro’s quick jab to the jaw which he purposefully skipped to free up an arm for a counter, fired off a wild cannon blast at Kusagoro’s direction. It fired off into the distance meanwhile Kusagoro’s body danced in a blurry spin on his dominant leg placing the ninja behind his opponent with a finishing elbow strike to Francho’s back sending the Pirate Lord away through the seas like a flat pebble skidding over the surface of a lake crashing into an island a good twenty thousand kilometers away.
The cannonball which Francho had fired blasted off into the distance, past into the horizon and then silence… Absolute white covered up the sky completely blinding anyone on that hemisphere of the planet. Far away in the cold vastness of space the rogue cannonball hit a space body completely devoid of a chakra network detonating in its full intensity unleashing a blast zone of at least fifty thousand kilometers as a rampant shockwave emanated throughout nearby planets shaking them up and causing untold cataclysms throughout. Deafening blasting noise tried turning Mana’s eardrums to chalky dust but then the magician recovered seeing her friends covering her eyes as well as her entire body up with a human dome as they synced up their chakra focuses forming a protective formation.
Kusagoro looked into the sky with great annoyance. For a moment Mana could’ve sworn seeing surprise in his eyes but then it was passed down to Kouta and Shimo who just stared off into the skies above.
“That cannonball…” Shimo uttered in respective fear and uncertainty.
“Yeah…” Kouta nodded before turning at the blood stained main mast of the giant juggernaut ship in which the Pirate Lord rode. Now it made perfect sense why the poor captain got completely obliterated by one shot from that handheld weapon.
“What if that was a planet it hit?” Meiko stared off into the sky, augmenting her visual senses using chakra trying to peek into the destruction the cataclysmic detonation had caused.
“It did…” Kusagoro grunted through grinding teeth before looking into the distant drowning rubble of an island he sent the Pirate Lord through. “It hit a moon and completely blown it to bits, the blast shockwave must’ve decimated the surface of the planet of that moon. I can see the damage on that planet from a fair distance visually, the whole thing is coloring blaze red…”
“Father…” Kouta tried opening up a topic but Kusagoro closed his eyes and yelled out interrupting his son.
“I can take what he can dish out. Don’t worry. This is nothing” the man tried calming his son down but there was still some unclear anger in Kusagoro’s eyes.
A rotating brown ball covered up the Sun before beginning to spiral right at Kusagoro who just extended his hand at his opponent stopping the oversized man cannonball that just bounced off after Red realized that he would not hurt his opponent this way.
“Human Bullet Tank!” the Pirate Lord shouted out after the human rolling cannonball returned to his normal oversized colossus of a man form.
“Well, well… A lousy pirate learned some tricks from the ninja ancestors that gave him birth?” Kusagoro grinned for a moment before resuming his pissed act.
“Just before setting sails for this island I was busy visiting a sea-god Ishirrinbu temple. Monks there dismiss all of their previous allegiances so my elders carried no shame with sharing their clan secrets with me for a price… That being said, this technique I’ve learned long before I deserted the Island of Serenity’s navy” the Pirate Lord huffed out after wiping a drool of blood running down his nose and his lip. The man was glad that he was given this chance to catch some of his breath.
“That cannonball. What is it?” Kusagoro asked pointing at the still fiery skies as the clouds were absolutely wiped away from the tremendous sky pressure momentarily wiping away the dark dread brought by the Box, showing only burning skies above before the Box’s evil chakra once again took over the climate ravaging the skies with purple thunderbolts and thick endless layers of dark clouds.
“Antimatter. Each cannonball holds one ton of it sealed off with chakra seals in a hardened shell. One group of seals is supposed to contain the antimatter from all the matter within the shell while the other one is designed to forcefully transfer all that force right through the object it is aimed at and not blow up the half of the world I’m in every time… I’m not that crazy” Francho grinned popping his cannon open by swinging it downwards so that it tossed out a large ball which he caught and showed off for the young ones and Kusagoro. It didn’t look much different from just another cannonball and yet the destruction it carried within was untold and tough to even imagine.
“Are you interested in this weapon, ninja?” the Pirate Lord laughed out mocking his opponent.
“Nah, don’t care about that. The Boss-Lady might though… If my boy brings back both those pricy shards and those shells back it’ll score some points with her” Kusagoro explained in contained excitement.
“Heh, whom are you trying to fool? Everyone can smell yer crapped up pants from here!” Francho thundered out in a wild fit of laughter.
“Hmph, not really…” Kusagoro shrugged after punching his own palm a couple of times in frustration, “It’s just that after seeing you take my honest punch and seeing all that destruction you can dish out you got my hopes up but truth be told “ you’re too weak to compare to my best despite pushing me there”
It was clear that the jounin’s remark properly pissed his opponent off who suddenly reached for both of his cannons and pointed them at Kusagoro preparing to unleash hellfire. After both of the Lord’s hands were moved away from his torn up and now unbuttoned military coat the darned thing opened revealing pockets and holsters filled with the cannonballs leaving almost no space on the inside of the coat.
Kusagoro fired himself off at his opponent, breaking off any leashes and completely letting himself off the chain. Fights like this annoyed him so much “ when his opponent was strong enough to really challenge him and make him not need to hold back any more but not strong enough to compare to the very top percentages of power he had to show.
With a wild battle cry Kusagoro’s fist dug deep into the pirate’s jaw throwing a couple of more teeth off into the distance. With another swift motion the jounin pressed a switch on the cannons letting all the balls just fall off from the cannons and scatter along the floor, all twelve of them were now rolling around and getting lost in the ocean waves through the cracks of the breaking apart and drifting island.
Kusagoro’s fists began to soar wildly, blurring, laying siege on the Akimichi’s defenses but Francho merely once again covered his face and head and started turning around with his upper body blocking the upper aiming strikes with his elbows or the sides of his arms meanwhile the lower punches while successful in being landed only appeared to deal temporary damage. For a man his size Francho definitely took as many blows as his height and weight suggested he’d be able to.
“Open Hand Slap!” Francho yelled out skipping a couple of blows to his jaw and nose only to land a powerful thrust from both his hands that blasted Kusagoro away into the horizon. Had the man met any islands in his ocean splitting flight he’d have demolished the entire natural structures just like his opponent did before.
“Don’t think this is over!” the Pirate Lord yelled out, his hands momentarily became too blurry to see and the young ninja realized that the Pirate Lord reloaded his cannons in the smallest microsecond before most of them could even realize what was happening. The giant turned his weapons at the young ones but then reconsidered aiming and opening up hell at Kusagoro’s general direction.
Much smaller blasts emanated in the distance. Mana had imagined that shells strong enough to decimate a faraway moon of some distant planet and decimate the surface of the said planet would’ve made a much more lasting explosion but the blasts seemed not much louder than nearby thunder and the actual blast zone barely even discomforted Mana as the light looked so far away.
“Amazing! Father’s body is absorbing all of the energy in those explosions. He’s actually taking those shots” Kouta realized exclaiming in shock. Even Mana, someone who was trained by Tanshu himself found it difficult to comprehend and believe.
“How about some of this then?” the Pirate Lord screamed out in childish glee as he quickly emptied the rounds of his cannons, eleven shells each and then reloaded them in a blink of an eye doing the same over and over again. The Pirate Lord emptied his cannons again and again reloading just about fast enough to fire another barrage.
After the tirade of fire and destruction began to bore Francho he lowered his weapons and holstered them by his side. His coat now looked much lighter which was understandable seeing how before it was weighed down by all those tons of cannonballs in his pockets. Now the man’s coat looked floaty in the evening wind suggesting that he may have emptied most of his arsenal.
“Now, kiddies, how about you tell good old Pirate Lord Red how to activate this thing and how it works exactly?” the Akimichi giant smiled looking at the young ninja.
“You bastard! Firing away blasts like that so easily, you could’ve destroyed the whole world if something went wrong! What if you missed and didn’t hit Kouta’s father!?” Shimo grunted out, ignorant fools like the Pirate Lord who wasted their power without control or restraint, caring not what ruins they leave in their wake annoyed the young swordsman greatly. They reminded the Yuki of the old Mizukage Daikon who made his family have to flee, the kind of person he wished to protect the world from.
Only a thundering laughter from the depths of the Pirate Lord’s chest followed the young one’s question.
“What do I care? I’ve got the ultimate wish fulfilment tool in my reach. Once I get my hands on it I’ll ask to… Ummm… Immortality? No… That’d be boring… To remake the world with me as its king! No… I don’t want to stop plundering… Fine… I’ll ask for absolute power unrivaled by any ninja, samurai or any other kind of warrior in the world. I will be the scourge of the seas, no more of this triumvirate of Pirate Lords! The seas and the world by extension whenever I will wish it shall be my Dominion! If the world has to blow up before I ask it, so be it, if I have to cross any lines to do i…”
A powerful hook to the jaw sent the Pirate Lord away knocking the handcannons out of his hands and completely lifting the man off the ground. The blow was so powerful that even the previously landed blows that failed to lift the Pirate Lord off his feet paled in comparison. Even if Francho had dodged the punch the air waves from its wake would’ve blown the man away all by themselves no matter how many tons he carried under or over his belt.
“You just won’t shut up, will you?” Kusagoro grunted with one of his eye closed, momentarily the veteran opened his eye wiping the trickling blood from his forehead away. The jounin’s ninja vest was singed up and his clothes were greatly damaged suggesting that whatever chakra augmentation he used to form a forcefield of chakra around himself skipped a little of the blast through.
“Hundred forty seven…” Francho yelled out shaking in anger while wiping the dripping blood off his cracked open lip and busted nose. This time he managed to control his flight and not fly off into the distance, he could only risk submerging that many islands before he finally caught the marine hunter-ninja attention. Fighting off all of their fleets as well as this Konoha ninja would’ve been problematic and even the lacking modesty Pirate Lord knew it.
“Hundred forty seven fucking antimatter cannonballs you owe me!” the Akimichi screamed out like a madman lunging into battle. Swinging his fist like a total loony without any aim or reason behind it. His style was that of a drunk bar brawler or at least it was the style that the Pirate Lord had chosen for this specific attack.
Kusagoro lifted his hand opening up a vent right in the center of his palm instead of changing the entire palm.
“Chakra Pistol!” he shouted out firing an arm sized laser blast comprised of concentrated chakra he had sapped out of himself as well as the environment around him.
Francho’s head cocked back after the blast hit and exploded right in the center of the Pirate Lord’s face with enough force to not only break the balance of the towering man but also flip him over himself a couple of times while in the air before Kusagoro’s leaping kick stomped and crushed the man to the dirt.
“Do you know why despite the immense power the ninja possess no one is banning their entire order or hunting them like freaks?” Kusagoro calmly began to explain while he nonchalantly hopped off the downed and awkwardly laying upside down body of his opponent.
“That’s because our power is proportional with our chakra levels and as you know “ chakra is a combination of both one’s physical as well as spiritual sides. Just getting blown up with muscle or reading a billion books won’t do “ you have to obtain both. That means that with each addition to a ninja’s chakra level they become wiser in using it. They know the world ending scenarios they could cause and so this planet continues to float in space for millennia… That’s until fools like you decide to trick the natural order “ fools with a world ending weapon or too much physical power acquired fuck knows where but none of the wisdom, none of the control. I don’t care if you support the sensitive balance of temporary marine piece, I’m killing you here, that much I can promise you!” Kusagoro declared looking down at his opponent confidently.
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