The rolling caravan came to an abrupt stop. Mana braced herself by grabbing her table, though she had to secure the chunk of furniture with her own strength since its feet weren't nailed to the caravan floor. In the end, she ended up having to do more work than she saved herself from. The good news was that she salvaged the table of cards she's set up while practicing a concept for a future card trick.
The old man tapped on the caravan door. Mana dragged the curtains open and peeked through the door with a curious look. "Why didn't you enter?" she asked. "This was your caravan and it may soon be your caravan again unless I find a crew to sail me to the continent alongside it."
"You should hold your horses, girl," the old man shook his head and pointed at the port that had been teetering with life. Lights beaming through the windows of most buildings and cheerful songs clamoring all around the place. Still, the actual pier had been dead-quiet and looked no different from the tranquil and still ocean gently wavering as the evening caressed it.
"Huh… What's going on here?" Mana scratched her head.
"You don't sail often, do you? No sailor is going to take off in the middle of the night. They may rise early in the morning, though. Hearing some of them from all the way here, a whole lot of them won't be doing much sleeping anyway. Unless you're in for sailing alongside hammered imbeciles, you'll have to wait until morning," the old-timer explained with a shrug.
"Then why did you take me here right now? You could've said so back then…" Mana squinted at the man, leaning out through the window to get a wider angle of the bashful district and the completely dead silent pier. It looked serene enough to hear the gentle splashing of the waves touching the wooden platforms, which made a jarring contrast to the rowdy and obnoxious singing and fruitless yelling in the air.
"Having seen you throwing your money around, I was worried that if I refused you or tried to talk you down of it, you'd find someone less caring about your safe voyage and more about your coins. I've lived my share of life already, I don't much fancy making the last few kicks into those of sweet luxury but there are plenty that would rip you off with fairytales of a quick and efficient voyage for a deluxe price and put you on a poacher's or trafficker's vessel, hoping not to hear from you ever again," the old man looked at the cacophony of masculine grunting of rambunctious bar-brawling and the feminine cries of sweet lovemaking drowning each other out and making the general mood of the district difficult to determine.
"Traffickers' vessel? Getsugakure has a slaving problem?" Mana scratched her head. She had read plenty about the practice of the slave trade in history books though, from what she's come to know of the current world affairs, the practice had long been extinguished most everywhere around the communicative parts of the world. She'd have never imagined slavery, a taboo in most countries, to be a part of Getsugakure's black market economy. It'd have been impossible to take Getsugakure seriously as a pearl of the northern ocean and a glorious and prosperous resort with that thought in mind.
"Not slavery, trafficking. The thugs capture settlers and tribesmen off of uncharted islands all over the ocean and ship them to work all over the world, wherever people are looking for cheap hands," the old man yawned. Seeing him act tired, Mana recalled she had disturbed the old man from his evening routine with this matter.
"I fail to see the difference still…" Mana opened the door and held it open, letting the old geezer know she was beaming light from inside her entertainment caravan for him to enter and make himself comfortable.
"The difference is that those dolts get paid. Heck, most of them make more in a month than they'd make living off of crabs and coconuts on their islands their entire life. It's not a scam of some sort, just a legal grey area. No business owner employing trafficked islanders and settlers would dare pay them a meek pay. As you've said, slavery is taboo and an unhappy employee is more likely to make ninja knock on your door the next day, carrying the King's wrath about bringing up talks of slavery to his shores and embarrassing him in front of the other Kage and Feudal Lords," the old man slowly crept up the steps and walked in. Mana closed the door and closed her eyes, trying to purge her mind of the sounds of the port town and feeling grateful that she couldn't sense the smells.
"Wow, talk about a woman's touch. I remember selling you this thing looking like a barn on wheels. You made it look like a million ryo," the old man looked around, marveling at the fancy, colorful lanterns and other native to Getsugakure accessories.
"I've really come to love this place during my brief stay here. I don't know why but… These clothes, this entire culture, it somehow… Feels right, you know? I guess I really thought that Getsugakure could've been home," Mana breathed in high on hopeful spirit, but then it all deflated away like a fart of the whoopee cushion.
"If it's any consolation, girly, I'd have been glad to have you for a local…" the old man's wrinkled lips curled up, though they stayed pressed together so as to not betray his toothless mouth by revealing it.
"Thanks…" Mana mustered up a smile.
The floor spread a dull, rocky thud when Mana stepped on it. Oddly enough, the fog was so thick that she couldn't see much of anything when walking it. She made sure to feel the walls and to always test the stone before committing to a step. Once or twice, she avoided falling into a spike pit and getting herself impaled that way. The dread she felt and the unease of her heart crawling her chest upward, looking for an escape, was unparalleled, though also peculiar. Mana was almost certain that falling onto some spikes shouldn't have done much more than grazing her skin, yet her body trembled each time she avoided a trip or a fall as if she had just dodged a certain, painful peril.
"Mana!" a familiar voice rang through the cave. It was unclear where it came from, though it bashed against the walls inward and backward. It felt as if Mana could hear mom calling out to her from anywhere in this misty labyrinth, though she couldn't quite say where she truly was because each hallway was evenly filled with her mother's voice.
Mana slid down to the ground, her back against the wall. She clutched her chest. All she needed was one short moment, just a blink, to push her heart down into her chest where it belonged. Just a bitty breather and maybe a cinch of rest to regain her strength. Tears began running down her eyes. No matter how much Mana wiped them off with the back of her hand, they just wouldn't stop coming. Why was she crying, this wasn't that bad. Just an endless cave and boundless pitfalls. Mom couldn't have been nowhere. Following this, she had to be somewhere.
Lost. So hopelessly lost. When and why did she enter the cave? What was she even looking for? Why did she think she was looking for mom in the first place? Mana could remember neither of those things. How strange. Mana slipped off her white glove with a playful clapping noise when the last finger to claim hold of it let go and let her hand slip gently down her right leg. She could feel her calf, she could feel her feet. She couldn't see them, though. It was that damned mist. If Mana raised her feet over her head to see them, then her head would be down in it. No matter how she'd try to bend or curve her body, there was no answer to how she could make all of her body visible at once.
"Mom!" Mana called out after standing up. Even if she couldn't see her foot, it was nice knowing it was there again. Even if she couldn't remember how it grew back. Maybe she never lost it? Maybe all those fights and having that trap clinch around her leg and all those horrible flashes of scarlet splashing around and the memories of her own voice filling her ears screaming to where she nearly lost her own voice, in the end, were all just a bad dream?
"Mom? Why did you stop talking? I can't find you if you don't talk…" Mana yelled out. She waited for what felt like a second, she waited for what felt like a minute. She stood there looking around for what felt like an hour. She was alone in this cave. Alone. Looking for she didn't remember what for who knew what reason.
Something bad… Something fostering grim intentions was in this cave with her. Mana clenched her fist and slipped her glove back on, tightening it around her hand before taking off forward. Her feet no longer touched the ground. That's right, she could fly. Why did she ever run around this place so bumbling and so lost? Mana was no longer lost. Some gnawing feeling that demanded she stopped that evil beast lurking in this cave told her where to go. That's right, she could sense people…
Mana's eyes shot wide open. She jumped off of the bed that took all the front section of the caravan. There was nothing like the gloomy morning filter and the sight of her own stump exposed and basking in the air to welcome her back to reality. A depressing thought popped into Mana's head that she'd have much rather stayed in that nightmare and taken her chances with the beast. Somehow, things made more sense when she was strayed off her path in a dark cave, wearing a magician's uniform and looking for either her mother or trouble.
It was reality that Mana sometimes struggled to understand, not dreams. Though a black pool of sludge that Mana felt choking her up as it bubbled ethereally in her gut suggested that her monster had followed her all the way into her waking life. The old man and the port town had been sleeping peacefully. A good forty minutes short of dawn, when it'd be pulsing and bustling like the vein of the prosperous resort island that it was. The beast from the cave had other ideas for waking the distant and exotic country up. Instead of the smells of mashed quince and breakfast, it offered the heat of cinders and the thunderous crash of cannonballs instead.
Mana bashed out the caravan door with a shove of her shoulder. She had no time to be subtle about it. She had a lurking beast of the cave to wrestle to the ground and make it submit. The malevolent ooze of black chakra on the horizon was no primal beast, nor was it a demon. Though it certainly roared like one as it made its way through the ocean. And the mechanical malady didn't come alone. It brought along an entire herd of beasts with it, smaller ones. Ones with much duller teeth and lacking the fancy, oriental, dragon-shaped cannon on the front of the ship, but roaring beasts nonetheless.
All but the largest ship in the center of the formation turned to their sides and stuck out their cannons. A single barrage of these blasts would thoroughly decimate the entire port town. It was a blitzkrieg-style siege that would reduce the port town to rubble without giving it a chance to resist. Even if there were more sailors and willing participants in a good morning scrapping, they'd have been too shaken and tossed up to fight back after just one coordinated fusillade.
A tall and slim man with long, slick black hair and a fur coat over a gold-encrusted robe stepped on the front of the main ship leading the charge. Everyone except for Mana and a couple of sleepyheads up for an early leak that planned to slip right back into their beds to make the best out of their remaining forty minutes of slumber were snoozing, and that was exactly what this bunch has been waiting for. One of them had enough awareness to point at the wall of wood and the rumbling, black steel of the entire sailing factory that was the central ship and shrieked "Pirates!" with a scream to earn the man an award. Provided he survived this morning.
With a low-pitched, unintelligible from Mana's position roar, the man positioning himself atop of the oriental, dragon-shaped cannon pulled out a golden pole with a mouth shaped like a big cat of the Land of Lightning wastelands with a haunting, red smoke and a ghastly glow emanating from its mouth opening and its eyes. Pointing it at the sky and in the direction of the port district, the man roared again. Just like that, they executed the silence via a firing squad before anyone could sentence it to death first. Mana's hands weaved together a good handful of times in just a blink.
"Shura Release: Jinx!" Mana chanted out, forming a triplet of gaseous, cerulean rings around her with deep-blue flaming wisps surrounding her in a tight formation around said rings. The cranky magician raised her index and middle finger, pointing at a blank point in the sky. The rest of her projectile-type barrage jutsu required more precision, Shura Release was a combination of Fire Release and Lightning Release. A flame with the tracing properties of electricity that entered its conductor and immolated them from within with unparalleled destructive power.
It wasn't a combo that Mana would've chosen personally, but as long as she was taking aim at the iron spheres packed with explosives that had plenty of magnetic properties to them, she'd end up using that tremendously destructive Advanced Bloodline to save a town instead of destroying it. Just as Mana had expected, the jinx wisps scurried toward every cannonball in the destructive fusillade, tracing them through electromagnetism despite being effectively just blue blazes.
A deafening drumfire of detonation drowned out the morning blue. It served both as spectacular fireworks and as a wake-up call for all the sleepy sailors to roll out of their beds and rush to defend their port town that was necessary for them to have a place to return to after their voyages. The wooden ships that stood turned sideways just let the waves float them for a brief pause before turning back to face the port town with a spearhead formation as they prepared to move in for a more intimate slaughterhouse.
"What the fuck was that?"
"Who the fuck was that?"
"Are you assholes out of your fucking minds? What the fuck…!?"
"Shut the fuck up, it's fucking pirates, man!"
Mana had heard the saying "the mouth of a sailor", though this time she wondered if this type of foul-mouthed reaction was because of the type of mouth speaking it out loud or if it was genuinely warranted. The massive industrial ship in the center that may have genuinely been over fifty times the size of the tallest port town building stopped the furthest from the shore to prevent slamming its bottom against the shallows.
It may have also been yet another way of crushing any opposition they were to face in the port town. The sudden stoppage of the floating industrial complex raised a tidal wave out of the inertia that picked up its own fleet but gently laid them down on its rear before escalating and picking up torrential horsepower and size.
"To the ships! We must form a wall and cushion the blow, quick!" the sailors spread a similar sentiment as they hurried from their inns and pleasure houses into their vessels, willing to sacrifice their sources for livelihood if that meant the survival of the port town that was under siege.
"They'll never make it…" Mana muttered to herself. While their strategy may have worked, albeit only after sacrificing most of their ships, it needed too much time and the wave was gradually speeding up on its path while growing taller and fitter for smashing with each inch it gained toward the port town.
It was up to her. But… She's never built an armor that large. She'd need to cushion the wave somehow. She didn't doubt the strength of her armor ninjutsu, just her ability to make it wide enough. Something of that side would've effectively been on a level and scale of the armor ninjutsu stages of its own. Thinking about what Hanshin told her, there was no inherent reason for her to fail. She had the chakra control. She had the raw capacity and more…
"Serenity Arcana!" Mana clapped her hands together. This would be unlike anything she's ever made before. No matter how much she tried, she just couldn't visualize a magic stage large enough, so she just focused on a single aspect. Closed curtains. A vociferous crash made it difficult to tell what was splitting Mana's head, the cacophony of the crashing tidal wave, or the focus she needed to maintain to keep the curtains closed to maintain the literal floodgate. The wave began moving back and thrashing the actual fleet that had brought it with them. Despite the constant shrieking in her head after Mana's hands hung numbly by her sides, she still picked up on the light tap of sandals by her sides.
"You've protected our port town from the pirates," Mimas, the first shinobi from amongst the pair that accompanied her to King Kamar's palace last evening spoke up. "There's something we've not expected to see."
"That's literally the only thing you should have expected to see," Mana panted twice before straightening her back and cracking her neck in both directions. Her meditation and chakra network exercises had done their glorious deed. Even after all that, she barely felt the foam being skimmed off the top of her stamina mug. "Do I ever shut up about how much I value life?"
"It's just rare to see anyone treasuring foreigners' lives, that's all," Iapetus joined Mana from the right as the sailors rushed to their vessels. The turbulent whirlpools that formed thanks to Mana's impressive repelling of the racing tidal wave were the opening that they needed in order to bring the fight back to the pirates looking to attack their port town.
"What is these guys' deal? I thought pirates only raided ships in the middle of their voyage somewhere far from either side of the shores…" Mana grumbled while weighing her best course for action in preventing the loss of sailors' lives and repelling the attack.
"This is no ordinary pirate crew. This is Ladron, the Salamander Dragon of the Northern Seas. He is infamous for attacking entire islands and port towns and taking them over, then leveraging them for ransom. The rumors were that he was looking to attack Land of Earth port towns to sell them to Land of Lightning for an arm and a leg… No one expected to see Ladron in Getsugakure," Iapetus growled, dashing off to a nearby rooftop to get a better vantage point of the situation.
Mana's feet kicked off the ground. She wasn't sure which Pirate Lord Ladron answered to, but her pirate-cred in having bested Akimichi Francho, Pirate Lord Red, should have made any self-respecting pirate turn around and sail where the sun pointed them to. Before she could make it too far toward the spiky fleet, a wall of heat and flames socked her right in the front. An invisible concussive force made Mana roll backward wildly until she felt the coarse rub of sand underneath her bottom.
When the feeling of up from down came back, Mana tilted her head off the ground, seeing nothing but a wall of fire and drowning ships in front of her. Even the mighty sailing factory of Lardon's main ship had cracked in two and looked miserable on its way to the bottom. Because of the relatively shallow seas in the section, it was tough to say if it would ever fully submerge or remain as a broken lump of junk until the locals pawned it all as valuable scrap and a bunch of industrial parts.
"That's Flintory, the flagship of Pirate Lord Blue, Captain Flint!" Mimas grabbed his head with both hands in shock.
"Talk about a bigger fish, what's he doing here?" Iapetus extended an assisting hand to help Mana get up after the blast that decimated Ladron's fleet and left his pirate career at the bottom of the sea in a flash sent her down. The Flintory alongside all of her accompanying ships breached the wall of flames and raging tides, looking set on landing in the Getsugakure port town.