The fleet of Pirate Lord Blue, Captain Flint, cut clean through the uneasy waves, walls of licking flames and thrashed through the obstacles of the sinking scrapyard of Ladron's ships. The Flintory herself cleaved clean through the middle of Ladron's ironclad flagship, which laid broken in half by completing the split and sending both sides rolling on their own with a spew of sparks.
"How does a simple wooden ship even do that?" Meemas wondered while warming himself up for a far worse scrap than he was willing himself up for.
"This is no mere simple ship. This is The Flintory," Iapetus corrected his partner while scanning the busy port town. The townsfolk and all the resting sailors saw this moment of the Pirate Lord's interference as something of a breather. Their chance to get themselves together and scrounge up the best resistance they could muster as opposed to being caught entirely off-guard as they were when Ladron tried bombing them to smithereens.
"That is just a ship," Mana observed, giving the big, floating lady a focused look. "I've never seen such a thing before, but it's like they coated the entire ship with chakra. That's how a wooden ship cleaves through tempered iron and ignores natural flame."
"Chakra imbuement? But I can't see anything…" Meemas turned to Mana.
"Neither can I. I can sense it though," Mana closed her eyes to soothe her breathing before focusing her gaze on the Flintory turning sideways and parking itself by an available port bridge.
The noise of splashing, comprised of countless instances, began drowning out the licks of the flames or the rushing waves as barrels of cargo began dropping from the ships. The sailors began brandishing whatever they got their hands on during the downtime, fully expecting trouble. A few of them rolled in cannons that were stored in one of the port town's warehouses and lined them up, ready to intercept the barrels.
"Wait up!" a masculine voice resonated through the port. There wasn't anything special about it, just an ordinary, somewhat melodious, and clean voice, though for whatever reason it spread through the ears of anyone wishing to hear it and soothed them down. Men that were up at arms and feeling like their backs were pressed to the wall, looking to take aim and fire on the barrels to detonate them before they reached the port now lowered their fish forks and long dispenser barrels.
A lone, round, and bloated balloon flew up from the Flintory's deck. It carried a short yet stout man with cartoonishly large leather boots with a flashy silver buckle, a simple sailor's shirt, and a long navy blue military coat with golden threads decorating it. The man wore a wide captain's hat and a bandana underneath it, restraining wild, shoulder-length black hair. From the looks of it, Captain Flint hadn't shaved in a few weeks. For a short and full in body mass and volume man of the high seas, Captain Flint's long and sharp nose had weasel-like properties to it making it impossible to fully trust the man from first impressions alone.
Oddly enough, when Pirate Lord Blue, Captain Flint, let go of the red balloon that had carried him all the way down to the pier from the deck of the Flintory, the red balloon didn't float away anywhere but stayed hanging over the pirate's shoulder. The sailors made way for the veteran pirate's descent. Mixed feelings were reflected on their faces. They were stuck frozen in between the states of bravery and the want to defend their town but also the unfounded terror of this rather simple-looking man.
"I'd rather you didn't perforate those barrels. They're filled with fine booze and loot. Consider it a compensation for what that sea-snake Ladron put you through," Captain Flint snickered, turning to point at the entire sea of barrels gently floating in the port's direction.
Husky grunts attracted Mana's attention from the rather unimpressive-looking Pirate Lord presenting to the port town. An old television box carried by a pair of human legs hopped onto the side of the Flintory's board and stretched the legs so that the oversized tech box could shine a beacon of straight light at its captain.
"Captain, I can't find Marat again. That freeloader was supposed to help us out with the barrels…" the television spoke in a cybernetically altered voice, similar to the one that's been tampered with by a voicebox but much older and scratchier in terms of its pitch.
"Hold your fire, gents, this is just my boatswain - Goodface. I understand that his appearance is peculiar, but I assure you that a real man of flesh and blood is hiding inside that television box," Captain Flint shook his hands out in front of him with a goofy and apologetic expression in an attempt to defuse the situation. "He raises another fine point, however. Sometimes Marat, our Chief Engineer Marat sometimes likes to hide in barrels, which means he might be in one of them at this very moment. You'd be skewering one incredibly resourceful and brilliant man if you opened fire at those barrels."
"There's no way we'll be trusting a Pirate Lord, right? I mean pirates are basically rogue mercenaries and ninja operating in the oceans," Meemas said, turning to Iapetus and Mana. The three of them were the only ninja around, from what Mana could sense, which meant that they should've taken charge of the defense of the port.
"It wouldn't make sense for Pirate Lord Blue to blow up Ladron's fleet and then attack us himself. If he cared about raiding or conquering the port town, he'd have waited for Ladron to beat our defenses and then wiped him out. Better yet, he'd have joined forces with Ladron and then backstabbed him," Iapetus noted.
"That sounds like a very pirate thing to do…" Meemas nodded.
While the two were discussing this, Mana floated out in front of the two, hovering in mid-air on a cushion of air currents that the Mystical Wings provided her with as she approached the Pirate Lord. Seeing the kunoichi moving forward and recognizing her face and reputation, the sailors all moved aside and made way for her. The earliest of risers could see Mana detonate the skies with splashes of hellish blazes this very morning and they've been all too eager to hand control of this heated situation over to whoever took charge of it.
"Hmm?" Pirate Lord Blue turned his attention to the young woman levitating in mid-air and approaching him from afar. He looked thoroughly confused that a young woman was approaching him and all the tough-faced and grizzled sailors were backing off from her way.
"We'll trust your aid if you tell us why you attacked Ladron's fleet and your reasoning makes sense," Mana said bluntly, lowering to the ground so that she didn't make the Pirate Lord have to strain his neck looking up at her. Instead, she made his face stretch, reflecting the interest of the azure chakra armor extending down from her missing part of the leg to compensate for it.
"Who is this lady? I'd much rather talk to the head of the town so that I don't have to repeat myself later. Getsugakure is famous across the entire world as the place to go to when sailing the North Ocean so my men could use some of that world-famous resort treatment," Captain Flint shrugged, looking all around Mana while avoiding looking back at her. The first impressions suggested this to be a sign of disrespect, though a thought occurred to the magician that the pirate could've been craftier than she gave him credit for by avoiding her direct gaze.
Could he have heard about her skill in genjutsu from somewhere? As a Pirate Lord and arguably the mightiest, the most feared and respected captain to ever set sail and choose the high seas life, Captain Flint would have traveled across the entire world many times over. Mana made no effort to keep her abilities a secret. It was the exact opposite, in fact. She flaunted them and showcased them to every layer of society all the time.
"You shouldn't underestimate me. The last Pirate Lord to do so saw his final day as a free man the day he did so," Mana took another bold step closer to the Pirate Lord, almost challenging him to look at her so that she could check which kind of man Pirate Lord Blue Captain Flint was. Whether he was a primitive simpleton or just pretending to be one. When the man looked Mana straight in the eyes with a baffled look, drawing everything one could take from looking at her right in, the magician got her answer.
"Wait… You're Konoha's Sorceress, aren't you? You and your crew did in Pirate Lord Red, didn't it? I heard you struck the final blow too… That was years ago. You must've grown a lot stronger since then," Captain Flint began examining Mana from all angles with boundless excitement. "See, I didn't recognize you without your cutesy uniform. You should never abandon your brand. I never take off this coat myself."
Rarely came such a day that Mana felt thankful for the fact she couldn't smell anymore. Her impressions of the way things smelled came from experience or other people's reactions to things these days. Still, she didn't expect this level of boldness from Captain Flint, after all, he was, as Meemas put it, a rogue. Most civilized settlements and ninja villages would've paid a fortune to live one's life lavishly until the end of one's days for the capture of a Pirate Lord. If one led Flint and his crew to a cell, that'd be an unimaginable payday and here the Pirate Lord was looking in the eyes of a young woman that could turn his lights off with a focused thought.
"Fine, I'll answer you, Sorceress. But only to set the record straight. The reason I wiped out Ladron and his crew is that he's an embarrassment to what the Pirate Way represents," the Pirate Lord snapped his fingers and moved aside, revealing burly and flamboyant men alike rowing boats to scoop the floating, unconscious or dead men littering the Getsugakure shores. Ladron was no Pirate Lord, but his head and that of his crew would've paid handsomely, given the man's reputation and how ninja of Meemas and Iapetus' level respected his strength and ruthlessness. It'd pay better than unearthing chests full of gemstones and gold, that was for sure.
"The Pirate Way?" Mana squinted her right eye, feeling a tad disgusted by the idea of pirates preaching about some sort of moral code to her.
"That's right. Being a pirate is all about freedom. Piracy is a self-imposed exile from society with only the wish to share the bliss of absolute freedom with the indentured small folks being a justifiable reason to return to the shore. Sons of biscuit eaters like Ladron just pose as pirates when all they do is raid settlements and claim more land to get entangled to. Boundless freedom is its own undisputed kind of power. To set sails for anything other than that is to waste it and my crew doesn't take too kindly with those that waste their freedom," Captain Flint pointed out, turning to the uneasy ocean shore with a look of revulsion aimed at Ladron. "What say you, one-legged girl? Does that sound reasonable enough to you?"
There was no sign of intimidation in the Pirate Lord's eyes when he turned back to Mana. This felt somehow even more surprising than when Mana still thought him to be avoiding her gaze. With the revelation that he knew her by some accounts and some of her reputation and still challenged her gaze despite that made the man feel like even more of a daredevil than it was natural to view a man that's cast an open challenge to the entire world's establishment as.
"Your Pirate Way seems consistent with what I've seen up to now. It makes sense for you to attack Ladron without threatening him or trying to compromise with him first, whereas no other explanation achieves that clarity. I'd say it's about the only thing that sounds reasonable right now," Mana nodded.
"Parley with Ladron? I'd rather dance the hempen jig," Captain Flint looked genuinely offended by that idea. Almost to where it made Mana feel bad for even bringing it up in passing. "I rarely parley with landlubbers, but I'd surrender him for the sole prize of knowing he'd be staring at the hempen halter stand alone."
"I'd like to assist your men in giving the port town aid," Mana nodded. A cruel reminder popped into her mind that she planned to leave Getsugakure that day and, with all that's happened, that might prove incredibly unlikely. She may have prevented the obliteration of the port town, but the operations would still be limited since there were heaps of trash littering the shores and the sea was literally foaming from the walls of flames and leaking oil from Ladron's devastated flagship.
"Do whatever you bloody want, we live in a free world," Captain Flint shrugged.
"Hold on now, Flint, you're still a pirate! One of the most infamous ones at that!" Meemas raised a clenched fist with his best war face on. Mana found it impressive that the Getsugakure ninja objected to the pirate's presence without feeling like lightening the load of his guts from the very sight of the legendary buccaneer. Had she not fought a Pirate Lord herself, she'd likely have felt like a little mouse wandering in front of a rolling tank standing in front of this man, no matter how unimposing he looked at first sight.
"Meemas! He said that he planned to leave. It's not like the port town can handle a major scuffle either. It's best that we leave this alone and carry on with our mission," Iapetus advised his more hot-headed partner.
"Aye, I said that I'd leave. Though make no mistake, landlubbers, it's not because I am worried about your response to our arrival. It's because I loathe the land and standing on it makes my guts unfurl just like sailing would make you sick, salad-faced and wobbly," Captain Flint turned around and shook his fist out in front of him.
An emphatic wooden pop came from the side of the ocean. A slim young man of noodle arms and legs burst out from within a barrel, splashing wine that was churning within in all directions, and surfed the stray boards of the shattered barrel a short distance to the shore. The young man flipped and rolled across the sky, like a human cannonball, and then landed feet-first beside his captain. He tightened his white with red stripes bandana around his forehead and ran his hand across his shoulder-length black hair with a snarling show of his teeth.
"It's Captain Flint, I advise you don't get that wrong next time, landlubber," the noodle-armed pirate growled.
"Calm down, Marat," Captain Flint pacified his engineer. "I'm not their captain, I'm yours. It's not mutiny if I'm not in charge of them, to begin with. Plus, it's not like any of you get keelhauled for not calling me captain either."
The television set that Boatswain Goodface was hiding inside elevated on top of bamboo stilts as the boatswain took a deep plunge underwater. An underwater stream betrayed the slow and methodical movement of the enigmatic boatswain until the stilt-riding buccaneer emerged from the shores and took a tall step onto the wooden pier platforms, approaching the port town like a titanic lizard looking for a place to rampage in.
A beam of light seeped from the flickering, colorless television screen. Despite the electrical activity, only static broke through. Likely because an actual man had burrowed inside of the television with his arms and legs that didn't fit inside through its corpus and dangling from its sides. Once again, the boatswain's mechanized voice breached through.
"You shouldn't leave now, captain. That'd be a sign that you're getting wobbly feet from that landlubber's threat. This town looks like a sweet prune to squeeze once in a while, but that doesn't mean you can't leave everyone here battered and bruised and teach them a lesson about respecting a boundless buccaneer," Boatswain Goodface advised as he continued to approach with his ridiculous stilt-legs. Despite his imposing size, he still looked like he could've been broken down and reduced to a ridiculous pile of scrap by just kicking hard at either of the wooden stilts.
"Hmm… That's a bit of a drag, but my trusty boatswain's right," Captain Flint sighed, shaking his head as if he was embarrassed by his decision that he had full freedom over. "I didn't wanna do this, but I guess I'll have all of you kiss some walls, barrels, and tables and learn to count to the number of your teeth before I set sail."
"So, you're bound to some arbitrary macho code?" Mana rolled her eyes with a volume of her voice raised high enough to take over the conversation and demand everyone's attention. "Some free life you live… If you have to do something you don't feel is right, what good is that freedom you preach about?"
"Why you… If you weren't a skirt, I'd spill your guts where you stand for mocking Captain Flint's freedom!" Marat pulled out a tiny box contraption from behind and began winding it up, requiring Captain Flint to relieve him of it and toss it aside for him to stop.
"I've got a nose for requests to parley. State your terms, girl, and make it snappy," Captain Flint growled at her. "My fists are gettin' itchy and I won't care for the fact that I'm land-sick and beside myself."
"You said you were planning on setting sail. The wonder of wonders is that I'm looking for a ship that can sail away from here. In fact, the mission that these two spoke of is ensuring that I leave Getsugakure. I propose a competition. If I win, you take me on board for a little voyage until I regroup with my Allied Ninja crew," Mana said. "I'm not much for menial labor, so I won't be acting like your maid, but I don't much care about swashbuckling either, so I've no intention of taking over command of your crew if I win."
"Now that's curious! Even though dollies onboard are a crummy omen, I love me a little frolic. Do tell me though, magic-girl, what happens if I win?" Captain Flint scratched his plentiful stubble.
"You're, allegedly, a free man. Therefore, I've no clue what is it you want," Mana shrugged. "State your terms."
"Fine. If I win, you serve me and my mateys drinks and you and your fancy nails will scrub the decks. Not the Flintory's mind you, the decks of a much crappier and a tad more rotten ship, mind you," Captain Flint extended his hand for a shake. Mana answered it without hesitation.
"What is the game? Since you're so well-traveled, I'd imagine you know the rules of Weiner?" Mana raised her eyebrows, looking hopeful.
"Nice try, girly. I know you're some kind of professional trickster. Given your level of skill with ninjutsu and renown as a kunoichi, I'd wager that despite my illustrious skill in keelhauling dastardly cheats, I'd never see through your card tricks. No, we'll play a different game," Captain Flint growled, leaning in on Mana. Despite the magician's fear of sensing despicable body warmth radiating off of the veteran buccaneer, she could only get a lick of citrus on her tongue when she drew breath in with her mouth.
"I don't have a knife, though I'm generally fine with knife-fighting…" Mana shrugged when the daredevil rogue pulled out a knife from his thick, leathery belt by shoving his arm underneath his weathered military coat. "Can I borrow one?"
"There'll be no need…" Captain Flint flicked the blade in Mana's general direction. The startled young woman heard a rough wooden thud before she turned to confirm the fact that the pirate had embedded the knife right behind her. With his free hand and displaying a sleight of hand that even Mana would've had to commend, Captain Flint slammed another forearm-size chopper right behind his own foot and kicked the air. The speedy and jerky movement made the man's boot shoot right off his leg. "Tis here a Knife-Edge Deathmatch, girly."
"Don't be ridiculous, Captain Flint," Mana's face soured like a prune. "Surely you can see the problem with your proposition…"
"Do you think I've never bet against one-legged pirates before? Plenty of us wear peg legs. Just use your other foot and press it against the blade's edge," Captain Flint cracked his meaty neck once to each side before slipping off his coat and tossing it into the air. The liberated overcoat caught on the antennae of the boatswain Goodface's television shell and waved proudly in its wobbly restraints like a flag. The fleshy Pirate Lord pressed his foot against the blade he embedded behind him and threw a few lazy jabs at the thin air before him. "What's wrong, landlubber, feeling a tad lily-livered?"
"Come on, captain, surely you don't expect a young lady to take you up on grisly slobber-knocker of a game like tha…" chief engineer Marat was shrugging toward his captain before the audience howled in surprise when Mana stood in front of the Pirate Lord with her left foot while pressing her stump against the blade.
"Come now, don't take me for a scallywag now," Captain Flint grumbled. "Up goes yer skirt so that I can see your stump touching the blade."
Mana tsked her tongue and turned around. Unwittingly, her eyes wandered off to scan the busy port town, and all the eyes peered right at her. Excited eyes, worried eyes, curious eyes… Not a single pair of bored eyes. The last thing Mana wanted was for those eyes to nibble on her disability. She could almost hear the phantom sizzle and itching all over the right foot as if it'd have been dipped in battery acid for whatever reason.
"If you're planning on wriggling out of this, do so because I am undefeated in Knife-Edge Deathmatches, not because you feel shy to show an ankle that's not even there," Captain Flint lashed in Mana's direction, cutting right through the grave silence that had reigned in after he told her to lift the skirt and show her stump touching the knife's edge.
The elevated television screen of Boatswain Goodface flashed and vomited a dusty ray of light from the static it broadcasted. "That's not fair. Your leg's shorter, so the captain's at a disadvantage having to shoot farther to sock you in the face," the boatswain observed with his modulated pitch.
"Calm your tits now, Goodface. I'll be better than a scoundrel and assume it ain't the girly's fault she's a tip short. Already she's showing some spirit for taking my terms for a manly competition," Captain Flint scolded his crewmate.
"It's not like she's the only charitable person here. Captain's not playing with a full-deck by competing on land," chief engineer Marat waved his hand in dismissal of Mana's supposed guts that the Pirate Lord was praising.
"You're a young and ditzy little rat, ain't you, Marat? Are you aware of the saying dead men tell no tales?" Captain Flint growled at his other crewmate, not being too keen on the fact that he tattled about his captain's condition. Meanwhile, pirates and sailors alike surrounded the two, and Mana closed her eyes to employ meditation. That would've been the only way for her to soothe her breathing and do what had to be done.
"You don't have to do this, Konoha's Sorceress! Let me!" Meemas' voice reached Mana from somewhere far, far away. It was because she had been surrounded by tranquility that Mana noticed how shaky his voice was. Almost as if the Getsugakure ninja had suddenly realized what he had signed himself up for. Still, he'd have stood his ground as long as his jaw would've held firmly. Mana was sure of that much.
Her parakeet eyes snapped open with intense focus. With all the subtlety of ripping off a band-aid, Mana tore her dress to expose her handicapped ankle up to the thigh so that no questions were raised about her fair play. This appeared to be enough for Captain Flint. Without warning, he took the first blunt shot. There was nothing elegant or sophisticated, nothing skillful about it. It had all the game of a stone tied to a stick being swung as hard as one could to squeeze the mammoth's brain through its eyehole. The audience gasped collectively.
Captain Flint stood there wide open with his fist just reaching out to absolutely nothing. Extended almost half a meter away from where anyone's head would've been. With a daring battle cry, Mana delivered a pair of palm strikes to the gate of the Pirate Lord's belfry just to test how hard it was. Wetness graced Mana's palms. She thought it to be blood, but when she cocked her palms back for another flurry; she saw it to be tears. Pirate Lord Blue Captain Flint had already missed his first terrifying punch and here he was submitting to Mana's viper-like slap that had struck all the sensitive nerves in the front of his face and focused the pinnacle of the force on the center in between the forehead and the nose, also, both of his eyes.
It wasn't that the captain was a sensitive man in touch with his feelings or that he was a wussie that cried because of a little pain. It was just that his body took over by instinct and sent tears sprinkling down his ducts. Captain Flint's head was tough, and it'd take plenty of crashing to breach, but it was no impenetrable fortress Mana thought it may have been. She recalled Pirate Lord Red being comparable to a high-tier jounin ninja in hand-to-hand combat. Captain Flint may have been a step above Francho, but Mana was standing atop of an entire mausoleum that her older self that faced Pirate Lord Red hadn't even found the foundation to yet.
Again and again, Captain Flint's fists swung with simple thrusts. Nothing elegant about them. He knew what he was doing. Mana was too well-accustomed to the Sun Disc's ways to fail to notice it. He was punching with the full potential of the human body, every trace of his movement was behind the punch. The ground itself was behind the punch. His balance was the pinnacle of martial arts perfection, but despite the skill, Captain Flint's punches were still just vanilla. The highest quality vanilla Mana had ever laid eyes upon, yet vanilla nonetheless.
Every shot missed its mark by a mile. The captain growled and grumbled, shooting for what he saw being the head of the young woman accepting his challenge to the world's most masculine competition ever made, and yet all he grazed was thin air. At this point, the only way for Mana to go down was to go down with a cold from all the draft he was blowing her way from each side.
A crack thundered across the bustling fighting stage. Its aftereffects tested the mettle of each bystander, doing far worse than ruffling their hair. Mana's elbow cracked Captain Flint straight on the forehead. The Captain's hat daintily touched the ground like a leaf separated from its branch. Mana saw just how tough Pirate Lord Blue truly was. Her eyes widened with a twitch of her eyelids and she ducked her head down. Captain's meaty arms slammed against one another, tired of swinging at thin air.
Her elbow didn't even faze the man. The buccaneer didn't stop there. His beefy arms went wild, shooting and swinging in all directions as if he had Mana pressed to a corner. The crew and the sailors all had shuffled together in a hectic crowd and they all went grave quiet. Each of Captain Flint's swings sent gusts capable of carrying an adult man away, but by huddling together shoulder-to-shoulder, the seamen all weathered the roughhousing storm.
"Hey, what's Captain swinging at?" Marat tilted his bandana to scratch his head.
"He swings at what he sees. What he thinks he sees, that is," Iapetus spoke up after crossing his arms. His strict glare remained fixed on the Knife-Edge Deathmatch.
"Konoha's Sorceress is a fearsome genjutsu specialist. I've heard some folks say that her worst stuff ain't even the big and horrific, high-ranking illusions, but her ability to subtly deceive you on the smallest of scales with no specific technique being employed," Meemas snickered. "I bet right now Pirate Lord Blue thinks he's attacking Mana, even though he's going for anything but and he's leaving himself wide open."
"Yeah, well… Your skirt's a bit short of a wallop to scratch our Captain too," Marat crossed his arms and made a sassy face at the pair of ninja.
A heart-rending note of shattering glass made a few of the closest observers turn their eyes up. A sprinkle of shattered glass poured down on the crowd from above while the television set wobbled on its wooden stilts. A man of large bones and a meaty waist flopped on his front from the television set and scurried to return to both feet. He pressed his hand to his forehead while glaring attentively at the fruitless blow exchange deadlock transpiring in front of him.
"Goodface…" Marat muttered, acknowledging the sudden appearance of the Flintory's second-in-command. "What's the matter? I didn't think this snooze fest would pique your interest."
"I don't think Captain's the only one being bamboozled with illusions here, kiddo. Tell me, Marat, how do you think the dame hit an elbow shot on our captain from that distance? Don't you remember? She's one foot short. She's been keeping it at a farther distance yet, somehow, she connected a hammering elbow. How did that happen?" Goodface growled while trying to peer at the finer details of the bout he was missing while sitting inside of the TV set on a pair of stilts. As the chubby boatswain of tanned skin and curly black hair turned and leaned about, his fist-sized golden earrings with different gemstones dangled and clanked about in response to the shifting inertia.
"Are you accusing Konoha's Sorceress of moving her foot from the knife?" Meemas raised his fist up with outrage.
"Let's face it, landlubber, it wouldn't be the first time that your little angel's been cheating. In fact, ever since the signal to go, all she's been doing is cheating," Goodface waved his hand in a dismissing gesture.
"Aye, the problem is that the Captain can't call her out, because he can't prove anything. He's no clue how and when she's cheating… But the lady's rotten black like Goodface's molars, that's for sure," Marat pouted his lips like a duck in disdain of Mana's dirty tactics.
Mana grunted in pain and staggered. Each time she struck her opponent, it was like the backlash of the force reverberated all throughout her body. She's never encountered anyone fighting like this. It was a lot like chakra augmentation, except she was certain that if someone employed it to such a brazen extent–they'd have torn up their network long ago. This was different. Much different… It didn't even feel like chakra augmentation, not entirely.
Seeing his opening in Mana's staggering, Captain Flint extended his arms to the sides. It began looking as if the sea itself had come to life and surged in vortex-like spouts. The jets of water all made their way to Captain Flint and splashed around his fists. Seeing this and sensing the chakra present within the surging water, Mana remembered Captain Flint's fleet and its silk-thin layer of chakra coating. It was a lot like armor ninjutsu. A step beyond chakra augmentation, a step beneath armor ninjutsu.
"Locker Shut!" Captain Flint howled, thrusting his water-coated fists at Mana. The layer of salt and seas had fit his forearms like a glove and made living maces out of his fists. Something made it feel like the captain simply couldn't miss with fists of this size.
"Hit!" Marat pumped his fist with a rich smile. The aquatic fists of Captain Flint didn't let up. The titanic right that he slammed into Mana's jaw drilled onward, looking to send her flying and force a disqualification from their competition.
"That's dirty…" Iapetus hissed.
"Captain's not doing anything that's against the rules. He's just punching, that's all. If your dame flies away and slips out of her boots from the impact, that ain't none concern of ours," Goodface shrugged, exhaling calmer after seeing his captain gain some semblance of control over the deathmatch.
"Plus, it ain't like the land witch has been playing fair either with her subtle environmental illusions and whatnot…" Marat waved his hand at the two bundled Getsugakure ninja.
"Flashy… Also, naïve…" Mana's voice reached Captain Flint's ears. The burly pirate widened his eyes in surprise as he had never heard someone with a fist filling their mouth and shoving their teeth down their throats talk with a clear mouth. That was when a surge of electricity passed down his fists and made Captain Flint shake in his boots. Not even the adamant seaman could resist the call to grunt and yell in pain as smoke trailed from his charred body hair.
"More land trickery…" Captain Flint wiped the drool off his face while panting black smoke from his mouth. "It's a good thing this ain't the first time I've been hit by lightning. I've been a scout of Captain Darby "The Moray" Murray, you know. His ships have been known to sail through even the worst thunderstorms…"
"Honestly, if you fall for the elementary Lightning Release Shadow Clone and Substitution combo, it's kind of your fault," Mana straightened her back, having pushed a Lightning Release clone out in front of her to take the hit for her. This cost her a graze at the stump as she's pressed to the knife's edge much closer than she was comfortable with.
"They all think they've got aces up their sleeves until they run out of aces and I tear off the sleeves…" Captain Flint flickered with a feint in front of Mana. An interesting detail that the magician noticed was that despite having been hit hard by the Lightning Release, Captain Flint hadn't lost his focus enough to squander his Water Release coating. She couldn't recall the last time she encountered someone with this much willpower and focus. This was no man that knew the word quit. Agony was just a recommendation to feel bad for himself, which he could ignore at his leisurely call.
"Captain… Her foot…" Marat called out to his commander before hearing a thunderous response from the infuriated man.
"Shut your trapper, Marat. She's never moved her foot away from the blade once. That crafty little she-devil…" Captain Flint grumbled while cocking both of his water mace arms back and preparing to unleash them upon his cornered opponent again. "Fifteen Dead Men!" he yelled out with a shrill voice displaying grander physical strain than usual. Thusly the bruising Pirate Lord made his arms disappear from his shoulder. It was only from the forearm down that the flapping water fists made themselves known, but the daredevil sent such a domineering flurry of Locker Shuts at Mana that it looked as if he had fifteen watery forearms shooting hundreds of times a second each.
"She's closer to the Captain again!" Goodface bawled out, pointing at Mana's leg that was pressed to the edge.
"That azure shine!" Meemas exclaimed, pointing at an ethereal greave and solleret shining to the knife's edge. "It's that armor ability again!"
"That's how she's tricking Captain Flint… She's switching her armor on and off, switching between ranges alongside her casual environmental illusions," Iapetus pointed out, but this time Mana wasn't content with just pushing her body closer to her opponent.
"Serenity Arcana: Hat Trick!" Mana chanted out, casting a split-instant repeat of the same trick that helped her survive the attack of Hanshin's Misery Vulture armor. A pentagram formation of ethereal, azure top hats, each manifesting a transportation seal at the deepest end, mirroring the top hat that Mana wore along with her magician's uniform. Each time a watery fist shot into one of the hats, it popped out from another and socked the attacker right back. Like a sick and way twisted game of whack-a-pirate.
It took Captain Flint a frightening amount of time until he realized Mana wasn't fighting back. He's been pummeling himself with unrelenting power. On wobbly legs, with his left foot grazing along the knife's edge, the captain stumbled but stayed on both feet, somehow. Mana let out a high-pitched pant of pleasure once as the ethereal chakra armor top hats began dissipating into thin air. This exchange had rendered her short of breath as she's never felt like she's been combining her stage personality with a life-or-death fight quite like this.
Somehow, fighting Captain Flint this way has made Mana enjoy her first fight in her entire life!
Author's Note: So, on top of working on this double-sized chapter, I also published my first book on KDP that's available on Kindle and Paperback. If you're interested, you can check it out on my profile description. It'd mean a lot to me if you checked it out and, whether you liked or hated it, let me know either way.