Captain Flint stumbled, straightening out his back though grievous shiners were beginning to swell all over his bruised face. In a peculiar enough twist of fate, all of his scrapes were entirely self-inflicted, since the best of Mana's physical abilities barely inconvenienced the man and his tough as a brick face. It was hard to say which torrents of humidity pouring down his face were from the persisting water he had employed to cover his fists with and what was sweat.
A chilling battle cry made Mana tuck her head in and stiffen her neck out of sheer instinct. This came as a shock to her since she couldn't read an attack in the captain's body language. By now she's seen him swing his fists enough to know where he was coming from and in what manner. Her first call was correct–it was no mere attack that came at her. Jets of water swept through the openings and cracks in between the boards of the pier floor and wrapped themselves around Captain Flint's hands.
Mana breathed out. It was a fresh feeling after so much time–she felt a slight twinge in her gut and around her temples, she's been straining herself, but the feeling still was as if she had entire masses of chakra left to call upon. The magician weaved her hands together, preparing to execute an encore performance if her opponent demanded to pummel himself with his earth-shaking blows again but instead of forming solid maces to hammer Mana with, four slippery and nimble tendril limps with hand-shaped ends formed around the Pirate Lord.
Captain Flint's voice picked up in pitch as he slammed his open palms and the manipulated water tendrils straight into the wooden floor, skidding himself backward alongside the knife that was pressing against the buccaneer's foot. The blade's edge contacted the captain's exposed foot, cutting a shallow slice into it as its other end contested against the pier's floor and, eventually, found the easy loser. The wooden pier split into two parts as the captain slid backward, massively increasing the distance between him and Mana by cutting across the pier with the back of the knife's edge without moving his foot away and losing the deathmatch.
"You should count yourself lucky, missy. Lucky that Captain still treasures Getsugakure as the pearl of the northern seas that it is, otherwise he'd blast the entire country away like nothing," Marat yelled out with an empty taunt.
"Cannons!" Captain Flint called out. A handful of towering men with faces wrapped in some dry and stitched material resembling wasp nests in black coats emerged from the lower decks, carrying entire cannons over their heads. The two ogres flung them like they were mere sticks at which point Captain Flint's watery tendrils shot out to grab them out of the air and pulled them in to where the seaman could wrap them under his armpits.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Mana tsked in frustration. "It's not about how big of a fist you can make or how powerful of a blast you can build up. Even an opponent of your scale can't beat me with raw power alone anymore."
"Go ahead and reflect my fusillade back at me, girly, I'll can keep dishing it out and taking it at the same time," Captain Flint howled out as oozing and howling whirlpools emerged from the foaming and roaring seas behind the scarred and beefy back of the veteran pirate. The water spouted into the entryway of the cannon only for the Pirate Lord's chakra to coat them and shoot house-sized blobs of water. Unlike regular cannons, these didn't appear to require any time to reload and could use any firing mode their user desired. "Water Style: Briny Bomber!" Captain Flint croaked out while holding both cannons firmly under his arms.
"Serenity Arcana!" Mana switched her hand seal position into an open palm clap, shaping an armor ninjutsu construct of a magician's stage out in front of her with the back wall becoming one with her so that she didn't have to move the armored boot construct away from the knife. By now Captain Flint might have caught on that while Mana was using her armor ninjutsu to shape her foot and press it to the knife's edge, her options for other jutsu to be used were limited. To use the full assembly of her techniques, Mana would've had to cease the armor ninjutsu and connect her exposed stump to the razor once more.
The watery blobs smashed against the ethereal chakra construct, rattling it and creating visible, glowing cracks in it. The help onboard the captain's fleet kept on flinging cannons at their captain and more and more aquatic tendrils shot out to scoop them out from the air and pull them in to the Pirate Lord. Captain Flint had to imbue his forearms again just to accommodate all the heavy-duty arsenal he was packing over his shoulders, in his grip, and under his armpits.
"Water Release: Briny Gatling!" Captain Flint yelled out, firing from all the cannons in a rapid series that didn't seem to have an end to it. The black barrels just kept on spouting one after the other. Even when one of them went silent in between the series of shots, the others compensated for it by picking up the pace.
"Serenity Arcana: Hat Trick!" Mana snapped her fingers, transforming the crumbling construct of a magical stage into dozens of hats that rotated to fit each of the incoming blasts while yet another spewed it out through a transference seal on the bottom of the hat. The "Seal" kanji lit up with a scarlet gleam at the side of each cylinder. Captain Flint unleashed a hellish bombardment and received its equal in return. And yet he had coated his cannons to withstand direct strikes, and he just weathered the storm of his own making by just standing and taking his own returned shots with gnashed teeth. Like a ship battered by a merciless typhoon.
Except, in the Captain's case, the typhoon was entirely of his own making.
"This is ridiculous, what kind of Knife-Edge Deathmatch is this?" Meemas grabbed hold of his head as the entire Getsugakure continent rumbled and ruptured, spitting out pebbles from the cracks and making it tremendously difficult to keep one's footing even on solid ground. If it hadn't been for Mana reflecting the aquatic barrage, a tidal wave racing toward the main village would've flooded and washed away the whole pier.
"Just how long do you intend on prolonging this?" Mana panted out once. "You're going to hurt yourself, captain."
"It's your stamina against mine, landlubber!" Captain Flint bawled out, shaking his whole body just to rattle the dozens of cannons he was clutching and to shake the water off of his head and body hair like a dog.
"Tough luck, my chakra resources surpass that of even some elite ninja. You'd have better luck wrestling against a Tailed Beast," Mana tried to warn the seaman not to play the game he's chosen. There'd be nothing to gain in having the captain of the ship she'd use to sail back to the main continent cripple himself before the voyage.
"Been there, done that…" a cocky smirk stretched out across Captain Flint's face. Mana's jaw dropped as her eyes wandered off to the Pirate Lord's crew. Both chief engineer Marat and boatswain Goodface seemed nonchalant about this proclamation, which made a flame of terror rustle in Mana's gut.
"Seriously!?" she exclaimed.
"Captain's certainly wrestled the Three-Tails a bunch of times. He's never beaten the damn thing, but he has scared it off into the deep just as many times as he got himself bedridden," boatswain Goodface nodded while crossing his arms.
"And you should've seen the Captain crack his noggin against the Eight-Tails when it tried to sink the Bones once! Captain cut off four of its tails and head-butted the damn ox," Marat pumped his undersized fists with an ecstatic look on his face. "The shock wave from their collision cracked the ship into two and we ended up losing it anyway, but still… Captain Flint's unmatched on the high seas!"
"Didn't you just name two creatures that not only match but surpass him, though?" Iapetus squinted at the pair of pirates tooting their captain's horn.
"So, do you still intend to test your stamina against mine, brat? Because I may not be as feisty as a Tailed Beast all the way, but neither are you. How about we give it a real go and see which one can outlast the other?" all the dozens of barrels that Captain Flint was pointing at Mana sank to point down for a snap.
"It would seem that I'll just have to end it quickly then. I can't let this deathmatch get out of hand and ruin this beautiful port district," Mana massaged her numb neck while slowly forcing her stump through the dissipating ethereal armor until it touched the edge of the blade. She moved her hands in a triangular, preparatory position, from which she could move them into any combination of hand seals without taking even a single blink to complete it. "I didn't want to try it earlier, figuring that you'd feel cheated and renege on our deal."
"Interesting, I've never heard you threaten before, girly. I can see the Pirate Way is rubbing off on you," Captain Flint's lips stretched out across his bruised face.
There were plenty of techniques in Mana's arsenal to rub the big captain man's face into the ground. When one contemplated the fact that she needed the captain in a working order to command his fleet as soon as possible, the array dipped down to perhaps a handful. Either way, Mana was an acknowledged world-class master illusionist, and she'd have no right to accept that reputation if she couldn't pull it off under these circumstances.
With Captain Flint taking aim with all of his cannons for another barrage, it would have been a struggle to find an opening. Since the elite buccaneer had withdrawn further apart and employed a far more destructive method of attack, Mana couldn't trick him by relying on cheap, disorienting illusions like before. Even if he missed, hitting just anywhere in her general vicinity was close enough when one called forth a whole destructive fusillade.
The sailors, the pirates, and the ninja alike all covered up their ears with the aggravation of all the cannons going off for another Briny Gatling. The magical stage of Serenity Arcana rose from thin air with ethereal boards for the frame, coming to plain view in the midst of the building process. Instead of responding with a Hat Trick, Mana used her magical stage construct to take the blows while she called out for Serenity Arcana to dish her own back. Ethereal constructs of airborne knives began whizzing through the air with the magical brush of the stage's haunting curtains. The energy knives thudded into the captain's skin, bursting from the impact as they sliced through his skin but failed to puncture his adamant body any deeper.
Captain Flint groaned and wavered on one solid foot while the other spouted red from the earlier trick. The distance between Mana and the Captain had a streak of crimson stretched across it where Captain Flint had forced his foot to drag the knife backward while cutting through the pier floor. Blood trickled down the shallow wounds and the skewered swellings all over Captain Flint's body. At the same time, Mana's Serenity Arcana stage began crumbling with the collapsing frame vanishing into cerulean cinders mid-fall. With the armor pressing against the blade weakening, Mana eased her stub back to touch the knife again so that she didn't lose contact with the blade.
He was actually taxing her chakra. Just when Mana thought she had improved by bounds and leaps, discovered her Advanced Bloodline, and improved upon her previous mound of chakra capacity, along came someone who still served as a mountain that simply refused to let Mana reach the peak. If she had to protect a life against a man like this, could she really do it?
"Give up now!" Captain Flint called out. "Right now, this is no longer just a fun game. This is a matter of pride to me! I refuse to continue sailing the high seas knowing that there is someone out there that could arrest me and take away my freedom whenever they feel like it, so I'll come at you with full force. You may protect yourself, but your fancy armor skill won't wrap around the entire country, will it?"
"You will not have the chance to threaten the country," Mana stated, moving her hand behind her and drawing a stack of cards from it. Since making the call to stand down from active brawling as a kunoichi after losing part of her leg, Mana stopped using steel-tipped cards since they were all custom made and Mana abandoned hers in the Land of Earth. Still, she didn't need steel-tipped cards, she just needed a flashy medium to transfer her genjutsu through, and playing cards excelled at that purpose.
"You gave us flack for being proudful and vain, but you are much the same way, girly," Captain Flint waved a hand behind him. A tendril of foaming seas rose from the depth and wrapped around the figurehead of one of his ships. The captain pulled, ripping it off. The barrel-like formation detached rather neatly, suggesting to Mana that this was no improvised move that the captain was preparing for, but a standard maneuver in his vast arsenal.
The daring pirate commander raised the retrieved ship decoration over his head as water spouted at alarming quantities inside of the opening in its center until there was nowhere else it could fit. At that point, a grumbling waterspout rose from the tip of the figurehead, making what resembled an improvised sword to slash through entire countries. The waterspout roared so high up it had storm clouds converging around it and lashing in directions with nasty thunderstorms, and the lovely morning skies closed down with gloom and grim.
"Screw this, he'll actually decimate the entire country with this!" Meemas struggled to keep himself on both feet. The Getsugakure ninja vaulted onward to attack the overzealous pirate head-on and interrupt his mad display of power, but a barrel flew in from the side and knocked the ninja into a gale that forced him to struggle against the pull of the colossal waterspout.
Meemas' sent a peculiar, double-tip kunai that was shaped in a horizontal crescent-like shape. It connected with the flying pier boards and this assisted the Getsugakure ninja with his attempts to return to solid ground. Instead of settling back where he observed the deathmatch alongside the rest, Meemas rushed for the captain again, only for Goodface's belly to splash against the reckless ninja which sent him rolling back against the turn of the gale.
"Genjutsu: Hell's Attraction!" Mana chanted, seeing her opening to weave a one-handed hand seal while she flashed an ace of spades out. The card's symbols and artwork glistened and flashed with supernatural light as the influx of chakra sizeable enough to comprise an A-Rank genjutsu technique formed a distinctive sparkle that seeped into the Pirate Lord's eye and made him wince in irritation. That only meant that it reached his eyes, and this was all Mana needed.
Flint staggered at first. Nothing in his unmatched career of pirating prepared Pirate Lord Blue for the daunting challenge to his inner sense of balance and the incomparable vertigo of Mana's illusion. His eyes bulged out wide and bloodshot as his jaw slipped down open and the fearsome pirate commander struggled to maintain his composure at first. Then he tilted his head and looked Mana straight in the eyes with an ecstatic beam. This sudden and impossible radiation of glee took the magician aback and made her lean her stump against the blade hard enough to cut it deep and sink the edge with trickles of crimson.
The waterspout boomed with unparalleled vigor, coiling into the atmosphere with a draconic howl and rushing with so much power that the entire supermassive sword Captain Flint had made out of the calamity had blasted into a dreadful downpour. The detonation had formed a flood, though it still rested in the upper layers of the atmosphere and would soon wash back down with all the crushing might of the divine fist that'd make a whole continent crumble and become its own grave at the briny deep.
"Did I not polish that jutsu enough yet?" Mana bit her lip in frustration, alarmed by the jittery and super-charged appearance of her opponent as the Pirate Lord seemed beside himself.
"Quite the opposite, it worked wonders, lassie. Your folly is that it messes with one's sense of balance and I am a weathered seaman to whom discord is order, and order is nauseating. All this time I've been fighting at a fraction of my balance, struggling to keep my breakfast down the whole time. You've helped me out with that and for that I thank you. Now, let me thank you properly by sending you flying to whatever corner of the world you call home, billions of naut-miles away from the knife you're supposed to be clenching to!" Captain Flint raised his fist over his head, focusing the crushing, torrential downpour into a single watery gauntlet that'd undoubtedly tax Mana's Serenity Arcana to its limits. No. It would've required a stage of armor Mana was yet unfamiliar with.
"Water Style: Walrus Hoche!" Captain Flint bellowed, swinging his fist as it drew in not just the downpour but the black storm clouds and the thunderclaps, incorporating it into the design of the makeshift colossal gauntlet.
"Serenity Arcana: Shura Drape!" Mana clapped her hands, forcing energy to seep right out of her fatigued body and rushing the construction of the highest stage of her chakra armor constructs. Besides it, azure flames extended down from its upper ethereal frame, posing as the front curtain of the Serenity Arcana magical stage.
"Ye'll be fetchin' me rum and serving as my boot-bench, girly!" Captain Flint yelled out from the bottom of his chest as he sent his fist on a collision course against Mana's Shura Drape. Mana's terrified scream provided ample starter for the blinding howl of the main course.
Captain Flint's crew, the sailors, and Iapetus who maintained his composure and didn't interfere, all became engulfed by flashing indigo light and a washing mass of raw energy that drowned them all out and left tatters out of the port town. Captain Flint was straight out screaming, surrounded by a firenado of azure flames and suspended in mid-air. His Walrus Hoche didn't even have a chance to test its ramming mettle against Mana's technique as Shura Release channeled right through it and conducted straight to the Captain's system and the immense size of chakra used left him helpless against the clutches of the jutsu.
Mana shivered on her knees, she looked up with her wet hair and soaked dress, making her look like a mad and vengeful banshee. The handicapped kunoichi tilted her hand into the air and clutched it, forcing the Shura firenado to dissolve and for Captain Flint's helpless body to flop into the raging seas threatening to flood into the woods of the Land of the Moon.
"Why did you attack, you madman?" Mana wrapped her hand in her hands and banged her forehead against the plank. The sudden motion made the knife still present behind her cut into her stump again. It was only then that Mana still noticed it. At about the same time as the rest of the crew did. With Captain Flint floating knocked out, singed and his mouth ajar, nose pointing at the clouds, the protection of the Serenity Arcana from the backdraft of the collision that kept the knife and the part of the bridge it was etched into intact had salvaged this deathmatch to Mana's favor.
Still, the crushing defeat of Captain Flint because of his inability to step over his pride and respect Mana's defensive measures would make for an incredibly awkward voyage wherever her next destination would end up being.
Author's Note: Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that this is where I'll be stopping the story for now since I've reached the point where I wanted to story to be in while I work on the next Annual. I'll be picking up the usual pace once the Annual is done and posted. You won't have to skip around as it'll take place immediately after this chapter and cover the entirety of Mana's voyage on the Flintory with Captain Flint's crew.