Kouta wiped the sweat from his face. Judging from his calm and satisfied expression and a relieving sigh he managed to stabilize Shimo's condition. Mana had hoped that the Yuki would just pop back on his feet the moment he was healed but that didn't appear to be the case. The swordsman remained downed however his face changed acquiring certain tranquility and peace as if the young man was just catching up on his iffy sleeping schedule.
The magician thought to herself that if Kouta didn't immediately switch the healing targets he must've spent a lot of effort to heal Shimo. Mana looked at Meiko who had loads of bleeding injuries, swollen beatings and bruises. She may have given those pirates one hell of a fight but she came out of it on the pyrrhic side. Whatever small victories the blacksmith had earned couldn't have been worth the beating she took. The redhead needed attention but not as urgently as Shimo needed it.
Kouta realized Mana was staring at her friend and rolled back on his butt beginning to patch Meiko up, instead of using medical ninjutsu the young medical ninja used bandages, compresses, and patches soaked with herbal ailments. That told all that Mana needed to know about how badly Shimo was hurt, Kouta may have improved during this trip by leaps and bounds compared to the shy boy who could barely treat a cut in an acceptable timeframe but he was still no miracle worker. No. He actually was, it was just that Mana's definition of a miracle may have been stretched out to the limits.
"I'll get to you soon, Mana... Just hold on... Do those injuries hurt?" He huffed out.
Mana looked at Shimo, the knocked out lifelong friend of hers with that horrendous X shaped scar on his chest stretching out from his shoulders to the hips. Kouta must've not even bothered with the aesthetic aspects, a medical ninja could've patched scars up to where they were barely even seen by an untrained eye but it was an unnecessary hassle in the middle of a battlefield. The young man must've prioritized the internal injuries, the lacerations on Shimo's organs and the big blood vessels. Containing the bleeding must've been a handful all by itself.
The magician's sight wandered to Meiko who looked like an angered war orphan who just barely made out in time from a city siege. Her face was halfway bandaged, bits and pieces of her armor and her tracksuit cut, torn to pieces and mixed with mud and bashed. The redhead looked like a mess who was torn out of an actual war. Then again, looking at the ruined beach and the broken into jungle scenery it looked like the blacksmith had brought some of the war to the pirates as well.
Finally, Mana's sight met Kouta's tired and hazy eyes. The girl realized the severity of the situation – Shimo alone drained his chakra pool more than the boy had dared to admit and there was no way that the two of them would get treated properly. That meant the worst outcome – Shimo won't be able to rejoin the battle because of his still incapacitated state, Kouta was too worn by his duties as a medical ninja to fulfill those of a capable fighter and Meiko was just barely sewn and patched together to keep her from dying. A rough bump could've reopened all of those wounds. The team was done with the battling or at least so it seemed...
Mana picked herself up on her feet and extended her hand to Shimo. "Give me a needle and some of your medical string, a couple of bandages and patches..." She asked him firmly, she tried to sound strong but the pain must've made it evident that Mana was both afraid and in pain.
"You can't be thinking of fighting?" Kouta just barely breathed out, judging from his voice he had just run around the world a couple of times.
"I'm thinking of doing what we came here to do – I'm going to use the Box. Hachiro-san needs our help, he won't win alone." Mana concluded giving the fighting Uchiha a small glance to reassure her statement to herself before she made any rash decisions.
"You know..." Kouta said quietly as he removed the requested items from his bag and handed them one by one to Mana who just gulped imagining the process of quick self-patching that was still ahead. "I think there may have been a reason why Hachiro-san asked me to heal you first. I don't think he intended the rest of us to make it. He probably doesn't intend himself to make it..." Kouta uttered much to Mana's surprise.
She gripped the handed items and stuffed them down into her redundant pouch, emptying all of her cards onto the floor. She wasn't fighting an opponent that could've been scared by some sharp card tricks so there was no use of them.
"Don't belittle Hachiro-san's sacrifice..." Mana replied turning away and slowly making her way towards the forest. She hoped that all the fighting would help her move unnoticed, her chakra level was reduced to that of a normal civilian and she was stumbling to the jungle very slowly. Just maybe, with a little luck, she could've pulled it through... Just before she moved far away that her normal voice could barely be picked up by Kouta she turned back to him and Meiko and smiled at them.
"Don't die and make me use the Box to bring you back..." She joked, still, if matters came down to that she'd have sacrificed her life as a ninja and her chakra control for the lives of her friend without hesitating. It'd draw unfortunate tears for sure, it'd cause so much pain for her but it wouldn't be a blaming game, it'd be the natural pain of misfortune. That sad and completely insufferable regret of a situation that just couldn't have been helped.
The magician looked at the cut on her side, it was by far the most painful wound she had sustained in the brawl with the pirates that was more a torture where she just lucked out than an actual fight. Slowly while in mid-stumble Mana pressed the needle against her skin, she couldn't patch using chakra like the medical ninja, she had to use the ancient stitching method on herself just to restrain the bleeding and the troubling pain in her side. There were countless of smaller wounds but that needed to be taken care of first.
Mana bashed her head and back against a strong bamboo tree and screamed out in the air as the pain finally hit her. It was something that completely kicked the chair out from under her promise to herself not to raise noise, it was something that completely busted the knees of her wish to keep walking. There was only the pain, that selfish lonely child that demanded all of the attention.
"Where do you think you're going!?" Mana heard a loud exclamation from one of the pirates. She couldn't recognize which one it was, a tall and quite well-built one wielding a small but well put-together blade. It was fancier than a battle use knife, similar to the short swords used by some ninja but even shorter than that. It must've been used for torture just as efficiently as it could've been used for opening up arteries and bleeding the enemy out in moments.
Mana relaxed letting her body slump to the ground just barely making the pirate miss with his thrust. They still took her for a weakling civilian and played around with her, then again, this guy looked like he had taken a couple of hits as well and couldn't have been in his full capacity. If she had her physical chakra use she'd have possibly been able to give this guy a fair fight but now she was just a pig at a slaughterhouse.
The man's body flared up for a moment, usually, chakra augmentation was almost invisible unless used on momentous levels of augmentation where one intended to move mountains. Also, it flared up like that when it was used unskillfully, that was more likely the case, possibly the pirate was taught not by a qualified sensei in an Academy but another pirate. A loud clang made Mana open her eyes and realize that she wasn't dead. A swift thrust of Hachiro's palm smashed the man's face into a tree breaking it down and then slamming it into the ground so hard that the magician felt her body lift off the ground from the quake. The rumbling sounds of trees falling in the distance made the girl realize just in what world of power this fight was. A world she was forced to leave behind...
"The kid didn't heal you!?" Hachiro angrily asked placing himself in between Mana and the upcoming rushing pirates, the few that remained.
"I asked him to heal Shimo first. He'd have died if Kouta didn't heal him first." Mana told him. Hachiro ground his teeth withstanding a scimitar slash opening up a wound on his chest. She stumbled back witnessing the pirates surrounding the aged rogue and starting to just kick him and beat the man around, completely oblivious to Mana who was laying on the ground nearby. The pirates flashed around, whizzing by Mana's ears leaving downed trees, blood trails, and destruction in their wake. Some of Hachiro's blood fell on Mana, even on her face.
"Fuck all of you!" Hachiro screamed swinging his sword in a wide circular arc and sending all of the pirates off of him bashing through trees. The battle was well into the jungle again. Causing untold destruction and sadness to a place that appeared to be completely untouched by man before.
"Run! Survive! Whatever you do, just survive!" The Uchiha yelled looking Mana straight in the eyes with those bloodshot crazy Sharingan eyes of his. The man's hands flashed through hand seals finishing the chain of seals with the clone hand sign.
"Water Clone Jutsu!" He chanted out erecting two identical copies of himself that stood close to him. The three attacked the remaining pirates together at once, finally somewhat evening the odds but by the cost of further chipping away at Hachiro's already worn out chakra reserves.
The water clones were strong, each water clone made by the Water Clone Jutsu carried about one-tenth of the original's strength, speed, and endurance. They could only augment their bodies to the equivalent of the chakra pool granted to them by the user of the technique. Judging from the beatdown each clone delivered to their pirate of choice it was considerable. Hachiro must've decided to win this battle but give up trying to win the whole war with Read. He was too injured and far too worn out to beat her clean anyways.
Mana escaped dragging her pathetic body through the tangled rising roots of the gigantic trees that made this jungle. The jungle that lead up to the pyramid in the distance, the pyramid where the Box of Ultimate Bliss was. She could hear the noises of Hachiro's grunts and water splashing sounds, the clones mustn't have lasted long. It made sense. Read alone could've dispatched of someone like that in an instant, it was just barely enough over the edge to kick those lowly pirates around.
It was all her fault, she did all of this! She doomed her team to fight a battle they couldn't have won when it was clear that Flint won't be arriving to occupy Read's attention in time. She caused both the next Pirate War and the death of her team. Mana wasn't sure what entity she spoke with inside of her own body back when she was dying but it was wrong. She did make everything worse just by existing, just by trying to protect as many people as she could she doomed everyone. She directly caused pain and death by trying to avoid pain and death of other people. It'll all be hopeless, the sacrifice of Hachiro and her friends will be hopeless unless Mana uses the Box. The last thing she could've done right was to ensure that a wishing device didn't fall in the Read's hands. Or those of Flint. If the Pirate Lord or any of his sent captains arrived later.
"I have no right to ask for my chakra... I need to use the Box to fix all of this" Mana realized. Horror and regret began seeping in her heart but she knew firmly what had to be done. She knew that she had to undo what she had done... Otherwise, her chakra won't mean a thing, she'd never redeem for the horrors she'd caused here that day. The greatest thing she could've hoped for was to grant her friends another chance to not get involved with Mana. To not suffer and die needlessly because of her mistakes.
Only then did the magician note Hachiro's final words to her – he was solely interested in her survival. It was just like that time in Read's ship when she spoke to him about the madman. Whoever that madman was he wished Mana alive, but who was that man, who could he have been? What sort of man instilled such fear that the people knowing him obeyed his wishes even when this madman was nowhere to be seen or heard of? Then Hachiro was acting out of the interest towards his own well-being and there was no sacred story of redemption and desire to help... She changed nothing, her nice attitude towards the man changed nothing about him. He was still just being paranoid about his own life choosing death in the hands of some pirates over dying in the hands of that man he dreaded so much.
As Mana tread further and further into the jungle Hachiro continued to fight off the remaining barely standing pirates and Read. Giving them enough of his own personal hell to keep them occupied and their thoughts focused on him so that Mana and her agenda completely faded from their attention.
"Just survive kid, don't make it worse on all of us..." He mumbled under his own nose.
The rogue screamed in pain as he felt a thundering flash of pain hit his back, a familiar sensation of being slashed deeply. As Hachiro fell his senses numbed down, he saw the tree he was sticking to the side of falling by him and a pirate rushing after him. The Uchiha regained his composure and blocked the follow-up strike intending to finish him. His body, as well as the body of his attacker, clashed, sonic booms exploded all around the general vicinity downing more and more trees as the two clashed again and again in the air before both of them reached the ground. They clashed tens, hundreds and even approaching a thousand times in a single collision of their booming flashes. This was a whole different level of swordsmanship and the Uchiha had to hand it to these pirate scum – he was impressed a single small-time soldier could sneak up on him from the back as well as take what he had to throw like that.
"My thoughts are too occupied with that girl and my own survival, with that man... I need to be here and now!" The rogue realized before his body flashed in blinding speed even to the speedster pirates opening up an immensely deep gash on the airborne pirate's side so large that it almost split the man in two completely. Only a brief string of flesh held the cut down pirate together as the body hit the jungle floor.
The Uchiha's assaults did not cease, he went after the two last remaining pirates. A wide gash opened up on the body of a chubby powerhouse pirate soldier, all the way from the man's shoulder to his hip splitting the man almost in two just like his comrade before him. Now that Hachiro was serious and focused, now that he was holding nothing back, fostering no false hopes of keeping strength for the final battle with Read, knowing full well he'd not beat her he was golden.
The third pirate – the one Mana noticed before and nicknamed him "grandpa pirate" clashed successfully stopping Hachiro's momentum. The chubby elder slammed his shoulder against his blade pushing the rogue away from the clash. Both the beaten and bleeding old man as well as the approaching exhaustion Uchiha just huffed at each other preparing for the following strike but then the sharp command of Read's interrupted the brief notable clash of the two.
"Smith, return to the ship. Send a message for assistance, we've lost enough crew here!" the captain ordered stepping up close to her subordinate and gently tapping at his side with the blunt side of her sword and pushing the man further. Without hesitation, the old man just nodded and bowed his upper body and clutching at his wounds began his painful stroll back to the ship.
The pirates used a seal message system, there were several different communication scrolls that upon being unsealed opened up and fired off an inky goo substance into the sky that formed a large symbol. That symbol was intelligible from at least the edges of each Pirate Lord's territory. Usually, it wasn't too wise to use such symbols as they were trackable by both the ships of other Lords as well as the marine hunter ninja. Now Long Smith's only objective was to use it and call for any nearby allied captains to arrive at the scene of battle and aid the crew to navigate the ship to the nearest safe island or port town.
Hachiro stared at Captain Read and her sister in arms – Bonny. He wasted so much effort, so much chakra and spilled so much blood for a bunch of kids. The man looked at the multiple wounds he had sustained with a short glance down, his raggedy and dirty clothes were all covered in mud and blood. The Uchiha knew he could've cut the old chubby shorty down, his Sharingan noticed that the old man dislocated his shoulder with that last stunt of his. If pressed from that side he would've been open for a finishing strike.
And yet they were both lucky that Read called that conclusive fight off. After all – she needed men to sail her ship and Hachiro needed to conserve as much chakra as he could to give this woman enough trouble to mess up her day. The man thought back on seeing Mana's injured body wander into the jungle, that meant that his silly student was prioritized by the medical ninja. Maybe if he prolonged this battle as long as possible he'd be able to have his student join in and aid him. Hachiro was still not completely sure about the level of Read's skill but with Shimo's help they just could've pulled it through...
Read. Read was the final obstacle and a fine looking and even finer sword-wielding obstacle she was...