The Flintory danced over the ridges of the waves. Men bustled on the decks of both the pristine and revered flagship and her many respected and feared companion vessels, though they did very little to make sure that the freedom machine kept on pumping. The pirates were clashing with blades, brawling, smacking their mugs and cheering for only they knew what. The Flintory was far from a dump, as one of her officers often scolded the crew to take care of themselves, but this was no militaristic establishment.

Was this the kind of freedom that Captain Flint spoke about? Stepping onto the deck of a ship yet refusing to maintain it, instead choosing to spend one's time gambling and brawling as long as one's heart yearned for it? What was the point of a Captain if he didn't presume to be able to tell people what to do? Come to think of it, Mana saw the Captain issuing orders only in relation to himself. Asking people to fling or bring him things, scold them when they stepped over the line, but only in relation to the Pirate Lord himself.

Just what sort of den of lawlessness did Mana step into? Was she truly any better sailing to the main continent on a pirate ship over one of the sailors' vessels? In any case, she wasn't free to make that choice when most of the Getsugakure's port was totaled in Ladron's attack and then Mana's successive deathmatch with the Captain. The doors to Mana's deck opened with a heart-rending screech.

Mana turned to check behind her. She fully expected to see one of the brick-faced pirates walking into her quarters to see if she needed anything, since she was a sort of VIP guest of honor during this particular voyage. The terms of her deathmatch with the Captain demanded that Flint's crew acknowledged her as one of their own and sailed her to the main continent. What Mana didn't expect after the death match, however, was the recognition of the crew.

The magician gasped at the unusual, black, wet and hairy sight behind her, which appeared to alarm the guest to her deck as well. It was a peculiar, humanoid-shaped figure sunken in black and luscious fur. Its posture sort of resembled a two-legged ape, though its face was too hairy to make out any apish features in it. When the curious creature spoke up, the lines of square-shaped, block-like teeth only added to the impression that Mana was talking to some manner of overgrown human-chimp hybrid borrowing features from both layers of the pool.

"I've brought you some tea, umm…" the hairy creature moved its hand to scratch behind its head. This caused the beret over its head to slip forward and closer to obstructing its line of sight.

"Oh… Thank you, is anything the matter?" Mana slipped off of her bed and approached the tall and burly ape-man and picked the tray with tea, biscuits and slices of lime and quince off of the hairy pirate's hands, referring to the pirate's confusion.

"Oh… Well… It's just that… I'm not very sure how to… Call you. Don't get me wrong, girly, I respect you and your strength!" the ape-man bowed to an alarming extent, nearly lowering its head to Mana's waist which made Mana back up with widened eyes and flushed cheeks. "But… The Captain didn't really give you a rank, has he? Ignoring the rank and one's strength on this deck is a surefire way to pick a fight and would very much wish to avoid picking a fight with you."

"You can just call me Mana, that's okay," Mana shrugged and placed the tray on the table. It didn't look like much, from her time sailing with Becky Read during her quest to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss, Mana recollected just how precious citrus and quince were to the pirates. Even if Captain Flint's crew was one of the richest and the most wasteful to boot, this was them spoiling Mana with a champion's breakfast. "I don't think I've seen you before."

"I'm The Flintory's Powder Monkey - Saruja," the hairy gent pointed at himself, flashing a grin to accompany the flashy introduction pose.

"Yes, I can see that… But what's your name?" Mana blinked a few times before asking the powder monkey for clarification.

"Oh, Saruja's the name. I am a ninja monkey too, though…" Saruja corrected himself by waving his hands out in front of him.

"That is curious. I don't think I've ever met a ninja animal away from their kind and roaming about the world freely," Mana said in a tone that made the ninja monkey shut the door he held halfway open as he had expected to slam the door and walk off before Mana stopped him.

"Doesn't happen too often, but humans aren't the only one looking for freedom. Society and organizations put a choke on you. Sure, a ship's got its own sort of organization too, but if you can back your lawless spirit up here, you're free to be as lawless as you like. The fact you got on our ship and earned everyone's awe by just beating up on our Captain makes that case well enough," Saruja replied. He patiently waited for more questions, but Mana had so many thoughts and observations rushing through her head that she just blanked out.

When she returned to her grip, Saruja, the literal powder monkey, was already gone.

"Konoha's Sorceress, have you come here to finish the job and rip the Flintory and her fleet from my stiff hands?" Captain Flint joked upon seeing the magician walk into his deck, sitting up and revealing a bandaged mid-section and a few missing teeth. The last one was entirely self-inflicted, in a manner of speech, at least.

"No. I couldn't care less about becoming a pirate," Mana shook her head. "It represents everything that I dislike about the way people behave. Your crew is a violent, greedy and noisy lot, unbothered by taking other people's lives. I could never command such a bunch of misfits."

"They're free, girly. Free to do as they like," Captain Flint drew in his lungs full of the salty sea air as he enjoyed the chance to stretch out and talk to someone. While the captain had been out for the last couple of days, boatswain Goodface took over the command of the crew, though he rarely consulted the captain about his role, nor did the Pirate Lord seem to mind.

"Therein lies the problem. I agree that freedom is a precious virtue, but there should be rules about each thing one strives to do with it. If the chef hands you three different dishes, you should still eat them with the proper utensils," Mana sighed and shook her head while pulling a chair to sit by the captain's bedside.

"That's a load of rubbish and you know it! You're free to eat whatever you want, whenever you want and you can spit in the chef's eye if you didn't like how it tasted, or even if you did." Captain Flint bawled with a peal of hearty laughter while gently nuzzling his ribs. "Though you kicked my ass thoroughly, lassie, you would've been free to drag me to Getsugakure and put me behind bars and I wouldn't have been able to complain about it."

"I did no such thing," Mana waved her hand in front of her nose, denying herself the feat of victory. "You were the one who foolishly didn't halt your attack. There was no chance for you to break through the Shura Release curtain, no matter how strong you were, yet you recklessly charged on. Besides, it was just a dumb macho game anyway. It means nothing. Who knows who'd have won in an actual fight…"

"I'd wager that in an actual fight you'd have done a lot more than just try to give me a shaky head with those witchy eyes of yours…" Captain Flint laughed out. "Aren't you the least bit curious though? Will you truly just take off when we reach the continent shores?"

"Of course. I couldn't care less which one of us would have won a fight. All you need to know is that if you ever threaten someone's life, I'll do everything I can to stop you. Then you can satisfy your curiosity," Mana looked Captain Flint straight in the eyes. The Captain seemed to get a bit of a rush looking right back at Mana even though he was in no danger as she wouldn't have just entranced a battered man for no reason, so he had nothing to fear from her.

"I trust that the crew's treating you with respect?" Captain Flint nudged his chin at the door and the men making a lot of noise outside and on the decks.

"They're complete imbecilic ruffians… Though they have their moment of primitive charm, I'll admit. Sailing with your crew, Captain Flint, I've only become more convinced that even the life of a pirate is worth dying to protect," Mana stood up and nuzzled the stool to the wall instead of leaving it in the way like she found it.

"Marat told me you don't walk around the decks too much. Just laying in your silky bedsheets most of the day. Something's the matter? We can't all be that disgusting and scummy," Flint teased Mana.

"That's not it, it's just that I find it more difficult to move around on the ship with my… Handicap. The deck of a ship is wavier and more unbalanced," Mana shook her head. It was true that she had to put more effort into either method of lying to herself that she still had a part of her leg.

"Curses, girly, you should've told Marat to get you a pegleg!" the Pirate Lord growled. "I'd have thought that after strutting onto my ship like a fragile little princess, you'd act at least a little like it and speak your demands boldly…"

"I'll let chief engineer Marat and the boatswain know my demands then," Mana nodded. "Please get better soon and stop being so reckless. Your men hold you in high regard and care about you greatly. Even if I do not relate to their sentiments, I can see where they are coming from and I understand them."

"I've got to say, girly, you're the most accepting ninja I've ever met. Most ninja with the strength capture me immediately go for it, meanwhile you keep on making the old man's life fun and interesting," Captain Flint restrained his laughter by bringing it down to a curved-lip smile.

"One more thing, Captain, your men are in an alarming amount of debt to me since they overestimate their skill at gambling. I don't much care about money, so it'd be great if you instead paid some port or island settlement my debt back instead," Mana said in a deadpan expression before walking off. She could hear hearty chuckling from the Captain's cabin while she floated off to her deck.

"Boatswain Goodface!" Mana called out after approaching the crewman on the main deck.

"It's a surprise to see you. Has someone tried to get you off the Flintory by gambling against you? You have to forgive them, few of these seamen know what a stage magician is or does," Goodface placed his knuckles on his thick, boulder-like waist.

"No. I've spoken to Captain Flint yesterday. He encouraged me to let you know my demands for our destination," Mana cut it to the chase.

"Our destination?" Goodface raised an eyebrow. Mana felt thankful that he avoided the entire television set and stilts combo while commanding the ship onboard, as she'd have felt utterly ridiculous talking to something looking like that.

"Yes, our deal with Captain Flint included you taking me to the main continent onboard the Flintory. I'm suggesting a tad detour that could let you get rid of me faster though," Mana explained herself. "There is a ship sailing in our direction. I can sense that it includes chakra signatures that are familiar to me. I'd like you to pick all of them up and sail all of us to the continent instead."

"And why would we do that?" Marat's voice made Mana step back to include the undergrown noodle-arm into the conversation.

"Because, I'd be willing to overlook the exorbitant amount of favors and debt that your men owe me for the countless attempts of gambling me off the ship in the past few days. Some of your men legitimately believe themselves to be owned by me and request permission to go about their daily duties. This quid pro quo, so to speak, would ease some of that awkwardness from both our sides," Mana brought it up.

"Why don't we settle it like pirates settle all things?" Marat picked up a piece of stray rope off the floor and began tying it over his forearm with a strict look on his face.

"Drinking until you flood the deck in vomit?" Mana raised her eyebrow.

"I challenge you to a Keelhaul Deathmatch!" Marat pointed his finger right up in Mana's face.

"Whoa there, Marat, the problem is that we're in too much gambling debt to this landlubber lady, gambling is the last thing we need right now," Goodface groaned, rubbing his tired face.

"Keelhaul Deathmatch isn't like some card game that this woman can cheat in. It demands toughness, grit, and endurance. There's no way for her to slither out of this one!" Marat had tied himself with the rope about as much as he could before glaring at Goodface and the rest of the baffled crew to assist him.

"State your terms," Mana sighed, deflating due to a thousandth attempt to best the woman that beat the Pirate Lord Blue, Captain Flint himself and hold a favor over her.

"If I win–you serve us as a yoke. Do all the chores and maintenance for our men. Your service ends when we reach the main continent's shores. What are your terms?" Marat redirected it back to Mana.

"If I win your Keelhaul Deathmatch, you'll pick up the Allied Ninja party sailing toward Getsugakure and treat them as VIP passengers. No harm will come to them and you'll tend to their every need. Then you'll take us all to the Mushroom Village port in Lightning Country," Mana said.

"That's a lot of conditions," Goodface noted. "You could make a case that you're asking for three whole things here."

"You owe me a lot more than three favors," Mana reminded the boatswain, at which point he relented immediately. "Now, what are the rules of this Keelhaul Deathmatch?"

"We keelhaul you both," Goodface shrugged.

"Then how is it different from keelhauling?" Mana smacked her face with her palm.

"Because it's a deathmatch." Marat insisted.

"How so?" Mana tried getting her point across to the two pirates.

"Well, a Keelhaul Deathmatch is a challenge between two pirates to see which one survives the keelhauling. Keelhauling is a punishment for a heinous breech of the Pirate Way. Usually killing the one being punished is the main idea," boatswain Goodface explained. "Both activities involve keelhauling, which is why they are called that way."

"Then why mention deathmatch at all?" Mana shriveled while observing crewmen dressed in spiky black and sand-colored armor over their polished bodies dragging in anchors that hardly should've fit aboard the ship and it must have only been because of the ships' coating that they break, crumble down and sink to the deep while lugging this sort of deadweight around. The pair of wasp-faced giants in black coats, familiar to Mana from her deathmatch with Captain Flint, helped drag more anchors from aboard the other ships. "Oh, well… Let's just get it over with then," Mana groaned and raised her arms in a T-pose, signaling that she permitted the crewmen to tie her to the anchors.

"Now they'll boot you into the briny deep. Your goal is to outlast chief engineer Marat down there. You'll be dragging across dirt, smashing against stone and the sea bottom and attracting many oceanic beasties to pinch your flesh. Not to mention, you don't look like you can breathe underwater and not even Captain Flint's heard of such a ninja art and he's been around the world–all you'll have to rely on is your toughness!" Goodface did a decent job advertising this pirate game to Mana though she stared on ahead with a stern face. Looking on ahead from the ship's keel made her feel like the bare-chested figurehead maiden the likes of which were placed for good fortune and embarrassing the sea gods into giving the sailors good fortune.

"How do we let you know we've lost?" Mana turned to Goodface. "I'd rather submit than have to worry about chief engineer Marat's life."

"You don't need to worry about me, missy. Just try not to bloat-up yourself!" Marat growled back at her with a taunt even though he didn't look all that more dignified in his position, tied to a massive, spiky anchor.

"These are meant to be able to stop the ship if needed, though we'll make sure to propel the fleet through waves ourselves. The Flintory's navigator Haltyard will keep a close look on you, he's got eyes that can peer all the way to the bottom, you see and ears that can pick up the heartbeats of schools of fish from kilometers deep and miles away. He'll know when you've had your fill of the saltwater…" Goodface stepped away to let a tall and gaunt-looking man with an elastic, hunched-position approach the side of the board. The man was utterly hairless and looked like he was highly elastic and had the bulging amber eyes of a gibbon and wide ears wider than those of a chimp.

It was a curious last sight to see before plunging into the gloomy depths and seeing nothing but washing bubbles rush to the surface while the anchor did its best to plunge to the abyss and embed into the sandy bottom.

The bubbles tickled as they raced to the surface. Their rush was almost a tad confusing, given the sudden and merciless plunge to the bottom. Almost immediately, atmospheres of pressure began counting up and squeezing Mana from everywhere at once. The magician had made a mistake of drawing in her breath before plunging, which left the air in her chest howl with a nasty internal bubbling looking to break free, but she squeezed it out on her own terms. At first the pressure went up by the dozens, each passing second of the journey down, then–the hundreds.

Even if the conditions of this challenge were hardly the pinnacle of comfort, the pressure took little to compete with. Without chakra augmentation it'd take around twenty minutes for the pressure to crack the bones of a half-decent ninja, with some minor self-bolstering, it'd be more of a challenge of endurance as no amounts of atmospheric pressure could do much more than cause minor discomfort to the outermost layers of one's skin. Mana struggled against the chains instinctively for a few decent wriggles. Her hands nearly worked her out of them by themselves, though she got herself under control, as escaping meant forfeiting in this case.

It was tougher than Mana thought to willingly condemn herself to the cold and dark depths. She resisted the urge to augment her body and suffered the grungy thuds spreading from within her ribcage and the churning in her joints. The sudden shift and the chaotic underwater currents, together with the abyssal pressure, plotted to twist and snap her limbs but it'd have taken sterner stuff to do so, even with Mana actively opposing instinctive chakra augmentation as her own personal demon.

"For how long have those guys been going? I'm getting a bit winded here…" a pirate of a white kimono and a black beanie cracked his neck and engaged in some self-pity while looking to his sides where twin wheels spun propelling the Flintory to roll onward despite two four-hundred- forty-ton anchors dragging by the ship's sides.

"Twenty-two minutes… Two more minutes and it'll make the longest that Marat's ever lasted," Hartyard pulled his head out from the water to reply. The creepy baldy had minor scrapes and swellings all over his face, as the constant washing against the skin had irked it significantly. Despite that, a twisted smile had turned Hartyard's face as he's been enjoying observing the two challengers testing each other.

"That's okay, I'll take it over from here!" a thick-limbed chubby of scaly, charred patches of skin with glowing orange cracks over his upper body and back, wearing a sleeveless white shirt smacked his cheeks that had glowing round scars on them etched into his scaly skin. The man's lively movements made his two long black pigtails bounce about in response. As the wheel-legged pirate rolled his way back up the Flintory's side, his replacement clapped his hands and hopped down, beginning a slow and methodical turn that gently shoved the ship along and slowly picked up speed alongside it.

Mana opened her eyes. Immediately, a fireball of terror lit up in her gut when she realized that the Magic Bubble Jutsu was no longer protecting her from the drowning abyssal element surrounding her. With a mortified expression, the young woman reached for her throat, spewing out a mouthful of bubbles from her mouth.

The submerged magician thrashed about, unsure how she ended up in her old uniform, though her unexpected change of outfit was the least of Mana's problems. Despite her best efforts, Mana's body didn't rise, nor did it drown deeper. All that she could do was throw her arms and legs about, cough up bubbles from her mouth and reach for where she thought the surface was. Truth be told, the abyss was so dark and oppressive that there was no chance to guess which way the surface was when the water no longer pushed her panicking body up toward it.

Against her best efforts, an entire mouthful of water kicked Mana's teeth open and poured down her throat. The burning sensation and the cold needles poking her skin from inside only made her efforts to hold her breath feel that much more fruitless. Desperate to prevent herself from drowning, Mana grabbed her throat with both of her hands and squeezed, as if trying to strangle herself.

"Let go…" a loud and low-pitched rumbling resonated through the entire trench. A mighty boom that made the entire ocean tremble in response to its resonance. One could have only imagined the terrifying creature that would have possessed such a strident tone. "Let me in…" the articulation sent torrents of bubbles rushing in a racing tunnel toward Mana. The bubbles washed with such intensity that they threatened to rend the flesh from Mana's bones.

Abiding by her best judgment, Mana writhed and struggled against the briny torment until she could resist no longer. With a lone meek gasp for air, the floodgates had opened and icy waters began pouring inward. The magician had expected the sensation to burn her lungs or to feel cold, but… It didn't feel like anything at all.

"Proud… Just what are you trying to prove?" the booming voice echoed again, rattling Mana's whole body with its ripping force. "You think little of your company, yet you're ready to break your back to prove yourself superior."

What was going on? Mana felt her belly, feeling it inflating as water had been accumulating in her stomach in alarming quantities that'd have made any lesser human burst yet somehow she was drawing in more water than anyone should've been able to handle and yet she showed no signs of agonizing end brought about by drowning. It was as if she experienced the panic of drowning and the sensation itself, but not the adversity or certain doom that accompanied it.

"You struggle for someone else. You fight out of worry… Commendable. And yet… Difficult to believe. Loathsome humans all harbor ambition. Show it to me. Your true apathy, your selfishness, your greed… Your… Ambition!" the voice continued to boom, sending an especially twisted pitch for the last word. The last sentence came washing soaking revulsion.

Ethereal emerald tendrils whipped out from nowhere. They spread limited lighting, though they could only illuminate clumps of other tentacles, looking exactly like those that lashed at Mana and wrapped around her ankles and wrists, stretching her out whole. Whole body felt so immensely heavy. It felt like there was absolutely nothing that Mana could do, she could barely even wriggle her wrists to struggle against the ethereal stranglehold.

"There it is… Your ambition. The craving to become a Sannin. The desire for status. Tell me, shameless human, what does a hideous varmint like yourself have to strive for?"

Another tentacle emerged, twice the size of the rest and wrapped around Mana's waist, forcing her to move in a hypersonic swoop toward the direction of its pull. That was until a bare humanoid hand emerged from down below, a hand decorated with five green rings that grabbed hold of the tentacle's center and tore the tentacle pulling Mana apart.

"What's this…? You dare foster hope of survival? Humanity is vile, therefore wishing to survive my judgment is to be treated as ambition. Repugnant things have nothing to be ambitious for. Horrid humans must only crave judgment and quick demise!" the titanic voice hissed in outrage. More and more tentacles lashed out from the dark surroundings of the cruel and unrelenting abyss, seeking to utterly smother Mana in their bondage.

Jade light everywhere Mana could see. The magician would have struggled against it, but her drowned body felt far too heavy to resist the colossal clump of billions of tentacles lashing out at once. Precious and refreshing darkness closed in from both sides, above and below. With a pleasant snap of rows of chompers slamming against one another, something had devoured Mana, though it had also severed the tentacles holding her down.

"Call me!" a high-pitched voice overwhelmed Mana's senses, forcing the magician to writhe and roll in an unfamiliar dark void as the sense of drowning became replaced by the panic of an endless fall. "I won't let you die until you release my seal! Now call me!"

Just as the sight of a red-furred, green-skinned gorilla with rabid fangs flashed before Mana's eyes, the jade tentacles whipped it and wrapped around its entire body. The ethereal tentacles easily wrestled the gorilla to the ground, offering dozens of sky-scraping tentacles for each of the beast's tail as it pressed the helpless titan to the floor.

"Ah, yes… The Tailed Beast. The one thing more deserving of judgment than humans. It is in your honor that we are called "Lesser Demons". Lament your own helplessness as you curse the disgusting ambition of considering yourself "Greater" than one such as I…" the haunting voice boomed as it pressed and ground the Four-Tails to the ground. A tentacle reached out and snagged Mana by her waist, pulling her out through the golden barred gate and back into the drowning abyss.

Just a flash of a maddening mass of ethereal flesh, eyes, mouths and tendrils flickered before Mana's eyes, before the shock of her own pounding heart made her snap out of the trance of deep involuntary meditation. There was a chakra signature nearby, a tangible, physical presence to focus on and keep pulling as she left the fearsome abolisher of ambition behind and followed the sensory trail of the chakra signature back to the material plane.

A slithery, gaunt figure crept down Mana's chain and tilted its hands up in surprise, having found a whirling bubble of Wind Release chakra underwater. Having noted Hartyard's presence, Mana disengaged the Magic Bubble Jutsu, letting the pressure to wash back over her. Crawling around the chain like a lizard, Hartyard went down further and closer to Mana. The magician wondered where the luminescence of the man that made it possible to see him while up close came from, but he gestured two thumbs up and then pointed at the surface.

Hartyard raised his disproportionately wide, mime-like hands for the second time upon witnessing that Mana had freed herself from the chains in between the brief moment of him, alerting her of her victory and telling her to surface without damaging the chains. The thick chain rings flopped on the hooks of the anchor while Mana pulled herself up and weaved a hand seal that made her shoot up at the surface like an arrow in a tunneling Wind Release chakra current.

"You cheated!" Marat pointed at Mana with his judgmental index finger when the magician burst from the uneasy seas and vaulted through the air before landing gracefully aboard the Flintory.

"Have I?" Mana squeezed her mane to free herself of as much of the soaking wetness as she could.

"Yeah! You could've sat down there for whole damn hours with that bubble trick you pulled!" Marat called out.

"I wasn't aware that I couldn't use ninjutsu," Mana pressed her hands to her hips. "In that case, I must admit defeat. I don't think that I could have lasted forty-four minutes breathless with just my endurance alone. In fact, I don't think any shinobi alive could have done so. Pirates truly do command the seas."

"You don't need to get sassy, lady," Goodface shook his head. "We're all aware that Marat used one of his pocket gadgets to breathe down there too. It ain't forbidden to use tricks, though it'd have been nicer if the two of you didn't make it so obvious that you'd both cheat."

"As Marat noted, this was a lousy challenge. Any decent ninja with skill in Wind Release ninjutsu could've flushed their lungs out, with the only limit being their chakra supply. It hardly is a test of anything, really," Mana shrugged.

"Fine! You win, jeez!" Marat clutched his head in between his hands, kneeling over a rubbery mask with yellow cracked goggles on them. This must've been how Marat tracked how well Mana had been dealing with her part of the challenge. "Talk about a goddamn setback! It'll take me at least four days to fix everything I've busted down there."

"Haltyard-san, it appears we have a talk on our hands about our destination," Mana greeted the crawling baldy as he emerged from underwater and turned to acknowledge Mana's request with wide eyes that were the size of a child's head all by their own. "It shouldn't take us too long to catch up with my teammates from the Allied Ninja if we pick up a half-decent pace and stop distracting ourselves with pointless fishing trips and sunning sessions."

"Sorry, missy," Goodface placed a hand on Mana's shoulder. "You may have won yourself the demand to pick up your crew and welcome it aboard the Flintory, but you don't get to tell us when we should get them or tell my men to skip their leisurely activities for it."

"Excuse me?" Mana squinted.

"The acting captain is right," a round bubble of white rubber wrapped with interconnected belts from all sides and a pair of gloves sticking out from the round outer balloon pointed out with a squeaky voice that sounded more like cybernetically altered incoming wheezes rather than sonic vibrations coming out. "You'd need to beat every single crewman in a game to have them surrender their right to enact their freedom as they see fit."

"Works with me," Mana crossed her arms with a capricious put and scanned the rich crew of colorful seamen gathered around. "Which one of you wants to slack off next? Let's make a bet on it!"

A thunderous peal of laughter made Mana dip her chin as she knew all too well who was bawling their chest out. With a hefty limp, Captain Flint emerged through a space when his crewmen stepped aside to let their recovering captain through. Even if nothing good could've come from the Captain leaving his chambers, Mana turned to face him.

"Even if that's not why we avoid bringing women along our voyages, unless they're willing to embarrass the gods' wrath they bring upon us when it comes raining down, this is just like a woman to crack down on boundless fun with strict regulation…" Flint shook his head overcome by gleaming hilarity oozing from his expression. The veteran pirate limped up to Mana and looked her in the eye from not that high up. "Just who do you think will bet against you now?"

"Are you being serious!?" Mana lost it. "Is this the Pirate Way? To chicken out of a game just so you can slack off in peace? I knew pirates were sleazy, but this is just pathetic…"

"I'll say, girly, don't go around mocking pirates while I'm looking right at you…" Flint's voice turned more gravely and husky in a heartbeat. "You're off on a dangerous path, making everyone onboard your enemy. Even if my men respect your strength and ingenuity, you're not doing yourself any favors. Games are played amongst friends and you're doing your blasted best to further yourself as far away from being a good crewmate as you can. No one plays games with people they can't stand."

"I played with you, didn't I?" Mana beamed a look back at Flint.

"Out of need. You had no choice. Freedom is all about choosing. Choosing whom to play with, choosing whom to surrender one's freedom to when necessary. You're not truly free if you cannot give up on that freedom on a dime, yet you must make that choice on your own terms. Make a willing sacrifice and no one'll sacrifice a gold coin for an uptight landlubber battleax like you," Flint spat at the boards on the deck and turned to limp back. The Captain has had enough of his afternoon walk. "I'd think long and hard about how to get on the crew's good side if I were you, or it'll take you triple the time to meet your old mates. Right now, half the crew's willing to sacrifice their freedom just so you don't get what you want…"

Mana let out an unintelligible growl and stormed off to her chambers. A tall and slender femininely shaped pirate stepped out of Mana's way. The long, black-haired pirate bit her black lip when Mana's levitating feet brushed against her dress. However, with the magician not even bothering to turn and acknowledge the feminine pirate, she sighed in relief while seeing the controversial passenger floating off to her room with a concerned look.

"Landlubber!" a crude-sounding voice made Mana turn while struggling against her morning yawn. The magician hadn't been on too many ships throughout her life, but even Becky Read's crew had some moderate militaristic decorum and didn't greet the morning the same way a bunch of ten-year-olds would have.

Behind the magician stood a pair of burly brutes with pointy, grey-skinned faces and thick, hay-like nests of hair hanging down their backs. In a way, the pair looked like shark-men, though there were too many uncanny missed features that made them remind more of vertical sturgeons stuffed into brown leather vests and cargo trousers. Their mouths hung in an awkward reversed-V shape, made it difficult for the pair to hide their lines of razor teeth. What also hampered that task was that neither of them had lips.

"We are the Kana-Bros!" the other gravel-voiced brute proclaimed. "We smash fish into fish paste, smash grapes into grape juice and smash persistent chests to reveal the booty inside. We also smash other pirates and ninja or samurai trying to capture us!"

"We're known to smash each other on the head too. The two of us take the most smashing since neither of us backs down!" the first one joined in explaining the habits of their smashing to Mana. The sudden reinforcement of the Kana-Bros made Mana's yawn triumph over her restraints and escape her mouth.

"I think I get the gist of it…" Mana waved her hand.

"Your yawn and messy hair betray you! You are seasick landlubber, we smell weakness! We challenge you!" the first Kana-Bro pointed his four-meter long and a meter thick iron mace to where its tip made Mana turn her head to leave it a centimeter away from rubbing into her cheek.

"That's right, we challenge you to a walking on two feet competition! If you lose, throw yourself overboard!" the second Kana-Bro stated, placing his webbed hand over his brother's shoulder.

"No!" the first Kana-Bro hissed. "The landlubber is tricky! Didn't you see her build a foot out of land witchcraft? No! We challenge you to a game we know the best — the Bopping Deathmatch!"

"Great, another deathmatch…" Mana rolled her eyes. "Why should I accept? Just how are you slowing the fleet down, exactly?"

"Well… We're free to rampage as we see fit! We'll bop everyone on our sight and then there won't be enough active crewmen to sail straight!" the first Kana-Bro became confused at first but quickly figured something out.

"Also, Captain Flint loves coconuts, so I can ask boatswain Goodface to stop by every island to bonk every palm tree for every coconut it stores!" the second one swung his massive mace over his head.

"Fine… How does your Bopping Deathmatch work…" Mana's chin sank down to her chest as she shriveled up. Before one of the Kana-Bro ogres could explain it to her, a sharp and noticeable clack of steel against the wooden deck moving closer distracted all three of them.

Approaching the trio from the front deck of the ship was a tall and slender feminine pirate with dark hair pinned into a dumpling-shaped bun and two straight locks hanging on each side of her face. A long black and red qipao-style dress extended down her whole body and baggy, long sleeves touched the bottom of the deck, fully concealing her hands underneath. The woman pirate approached the Kana-Bros and tilted her hand, exposing pale white skin underneath her baggy sleeves that were a mismatch for her more tanned facial complexion. The gaunt she-pirate did her best to conceal her sun-tanned complexion with a mask of sugar-white and bloody lipstick and cheeks, and a sparkling, magenta-colored eye shadow. The oddest feature of this she-pirate out of all was the pair of black segmented horns sticking it to the heavens above proudly in a strong V-shape.

"What are you boys up to?" she purred seductively while teasing the two brutes with gentle nuzzles of her fair hand across their shoulders and cheeks.

"We're gonna bop the landlubber lady!" the second Kana-Bro proudly declared, slamming his oversized mace into his own open hand. The tall woman seemed clearly peeved at how inconsiderate the brute was by swinging that massive clobber-stick so close to her and how she had to lean under it to move in closer and rub herself by the loudmouth.

"No way!" the first Kana-Bro exclaimed in vocal objection. "We're gonna get her to throw herself overboard and be the ones that do what nobody else, not even Captain Flint, can do. Then, we'll take over the ship and bop every ship we see as much as we like!"

"Sounds like a deceitful, well-crafted plot full of intrigue and delicious treachery…" the woman rubbed her back against the first one, boldly slamming her open hand at the shark-man's thighs.

"Ew! You let that freak get his hands on you, bro, disgusting!" the first Kana-Bro growled, slamming his free webbed hand over its whole sharp facial protrusion to obstruct his smell.

"No way, get off of me, weirdo!" the second one jumped up as if hot water scolded him. Mana leaned her head to the side with utter bafflement fixed on her face. The woman in black and red had some distinct, sharp and quite chiseled facial features, but Mana would've thought pirates to be more desperate for feminine touch than that. Then again, these two didn't hide how moronic they were.

"You two were about to challenge me, weren't you?" Mana spoke up for the two to remember why they came here as they've been offering a grand deal of attention to the fallen lady and nowhere near enough to the one they came here to get to throw herself overboard. "My terms are that…"

"No need to waste your breath on these two knuckleheads," the fallen woman spoke with a lower-pitched and trembling tone as she pulled her right hand up and to the left. Mana's senses immediately picked up a faint trail of chakra extending from the sleeves all across the pair of brutish pirates as a supernatural force dragged them up, suspended in mid-air and then smashing together against one another with their limbs twisting and churning in ways they weren't meant to go as they fondled each other's bodies with unnatural twitches. Their trembling, whited out eyes suggested that the very first impact had knocked them out.

Like a malicious spirit, the fallen woman cracked her spine backwards, bending her body to roll and flop to switch her position, which came with profound difficulty because of her long and bothersome attire. Seeing some similarities between the two, namely their adoration for impractical outfits and flair for showmanship, Mana couldn't turn her eyes away from the unnaturally contorting pirate until, in a myriad of chilling bodily shuffle motions, she returned to an ordinary stationary position and slowly approached Mana.

"What Captain Flint told you the other day was true. This type of thing will happen to you over and over again. Not only that, but the Captain's speech emboldened the crew to challenge you as often as they can, as well as inspire that idea in especially numb-skulled individuals like these two," the gaunt woman extended her elongated sleeve at the twitching and suspended pair that still hung wrapped together as if magnetized to each other.

"Who are you?" Mana couldn't focus on analyzing the curious sights that this woman had showed her, as the gruesome sight of the mangled and suspended Kana-Bros didn't let go of her shocked gaze.

"That'd take you more time than you have to wrap your head around, dear," the woman teased Mana by turning her hand about by her hair.

"Your name can't be that long," Mana crossed her arms, becoming suspicious of her newly met companion and her hesitation in introducing herself.

"A name won't tell you anything about me. Names are all made up anyway, I've called myself Renlan ever since I set sails with Captain Flint," the enigmatic woman replied. "Call it womanly solidarity, call it whatever you like, but I respect the hustle, honey. You seem obsessed about reconnecting with that crew of yours, and your passion fascinates me."

"Womanly solidarity? Come to think of it, it's odd to see a woman on Captain Flint's ship. His occasional remarks have instilled an impression of an old-fashioned sailor in me," Mana scanned the tall woman with her eyes.

"Oh, honey, I'm just about the only queen Captain Flint allows on his ship that hasn't flat out bested him and bullied him into tagging along," Renlan struck a flamboyant pose, showing off her feminine features and tall and slender body. "It's a bilateral type of relationship, though. Captain Flint's vessel is just about the only place I can be accepted as who I am too. It's not like either of us has much choice."

"What you did back there, that was puppetry, wasn't it?" Mana pointed back at the stuck Kana-Bros with her thumb. The two suspended ogres still whined and wheezed with whited out eyes frothing foam from their mouth.

"Why else did you think I got so handsy with them? Not because of their magnetic personalities and killer looks, that's for sure. I needed to place my strings on them," Renlan waved it off. Mana noticed a grand lack of care for the well-being of the two pirates as the crewmen that were passing by merely leaned and stepped over the chakra threads that were in their way and went on to their merry and liberated way. Picking up a stray deck of playing cards spread across a table soaked in rum, Mana focused her chakra to coat the piece of plastic thoroughly and flung it in a wild direction. The network of chakra threads ripped, releasing the two suspended brutes to flop on top of each other disgracefully.

"So you've come here to propose something?" Mana turned to Renlan, who walked off up to the edge of the deck and peered into the grey and gloomy sea skies and the mossy ocean waving about at the beat of its own drum.

"I did, if you want the crew out of your way, you need to get on their good side," Renlan nodded after turning around and leaning with her back over the railing, proudly buffing out her lively and inflated chest to test the firmness of the threads keeping it in place. "I've caught a whiff of desperation off of you when the Captain gave you his big pep talk. Your friends might be in danger, right?"

"Getsugakure sent me away because it didn't want them landing on their shores. The village shares a rotten page of history with the Allied Ninja, and I am worried that if the Stars land on Getsugakure shores, they might get in trouble. I don't put it behind the locals to accuse them of being behind the attack that struck the port and capture them. I may have my petty grievances with some of the Allied Ninja, but that doesn't mean I want to see any of them imprisoned or executed," Mana looked off into the horizon where the chakra signatures of her friends felt like just a few days of sailing away. Though, with how irritating the crewmen had been getting lately, all of their distractions would've easily led to the fleet missing the ship the Allied Ninja were sailing on.

"In that case, you'll need to offer the crew a compromise," Renlan's voice turned lower pitched and chose a sultrier tone.

"How is your proposition different from what the Captain suggested?" Mana raised an eyebrow. "He also told me to be more acceptable and to compromise with the crew as if it meant anything. They're the ones looking to throw me overboard like a wet rag."

"Let me tell you a brief story. Over time, there have been plenty of women that tried dressing up in man's clothes and tricking Captain Flint to get to sail on a Pirate Lord's crew. We keelhauled every single one of them. Yet I, someone who was born a man strut proud onto his deck wearing a dress with a body that's as much doll as it is flesh and blood and the Captain accepts me as I am, do you know why?" Renlan turned to Mana.

"Because those women were posing as someone else, you came to the Flintory as you are," Mana muttered out a response.

"That's exactly right. The Flintory was to me the same thing it was to everyone else here–a chance to be free. A place where we can become whoever we want to be and live our best life, no matter how short it would be. Still, freedom didn't come as a guarantee to me, even when we set sail. I had to prove my worth to the crew every day of the week. A woman onboard is a bad omen, it displeases the gods, so I had to work so hard that the value I provide to the crew outweighs the wrath of the gods that I invoke. The moment you show the crew you're valuable as something more than an insurmountable black hole of gambling debt that you are, they'll adopt you as that thing," Renlan pointed out.

"Okay… So how do I do that?" Mana scratched her head.

"You fight, you don't stand in their way, you earn…" Renlan began counting down.

"I'm not plundering like some lowlife thug!" Mana objected.

"You're not. You're also preventing the pirates from living a pirate's life. Right now you're the big bad boss bitch that stands as a gatekeeper to their pirate's life, their freedom. They wish to fight, they wish to plunder…" Renlan guided her gentle hand from left to right, showing off disgruntled pirates shoving and brawling with one another, throwing cards and rum bottles about and cursing like real sailors that they sadly weren't.

"No one gets killed under my watch," Mana drew a line on the sand.

"I'm not saying someone has to. I'm saying the boys want to be boys. You can just step out of their way and let them, but cut their chords when they've stepped over the line," Renlan shrugged. "In fact, if you do your magical ally of justice girl routine and prevent a crewman from getting killed, you'll earn someone's heart. That's for life and girl, you don't even need it for that long. You just need it for a couple of days. You need to think about it long and hard, is some paradise island's gold worth more to you than the freedom and lives of all your landlubber friends?"

Mana looked down, pressing her chin to her throat, deep in thought. "I'd like to see boatswain Goodface," she said to her newly met acquaintance. A rich smile stretched across Renlan's long face.

"I thought you might," she said.

"That squall up ahead will fuck our brains out! We'll turn the Flintory 'round, bounce her derriere and invite it in! Reef the mainsail! Direct out teet and take charge. We'll sail right through the center and take shelter in the eye instead of taking the full big throb!" boatswain Goodface yelled obscene innuendos for all to hear. Despite being liberated pirates in charge of their own time, none of them fancied seeing the Flintory's shatters sinking to the bottom leaving them homeless in the middle of the ocean and so the pirates offered a day's worth of freedom for their mutual enjoyment of its dividends later down the line.

"Boatswain," Mana called the short and round man up, gaining his attention. The television set descended from the stilts, and the light beam transmitting the man's shade from a beam of white light and static turned off. The boatswain no longer needed to be heard all across the vessel, so he descended and emerged from his televised shell to face Mana eye to eye.

"Missy," Goodface nodded while emerging from within the glass, metal and plastic cage of his own choosing.

"I'd like to offer you and the crew a compromise. Renlan here informed me that because of the Captain's lost gamble, your men missed out on some plunder opportunities. Wishing to make up for that, I'd like to give your crew some leeway and let them rob to their heart's extent, as long as they intercept the Allied Ninja vessel by the deadline and don't let it miss us," Mana said, lagging through the words as she didn't like the thought of surrendering whole settlements to the plundering of these scumbags at all. Still, what Renlan said tolled with some truth to it.

"Well, fuck me… I guess Renlan's not full of shit at all and she's got the real woman's touch stuff to it!" boatswain smacked Mana's shoulder in a way that Mana has seen overexcited crewmen congratulating each other.

"Yes, well… If you decide to plunder an island, a village or a ship… Whatever, I'll have a couple of conditions: one–you take me along with you so that I can make sure no one gets killed, two–no one gets killed. In fact, the modus operandi I'm asking for is that you take the loot…"

"The booty!" Goodface cheered, demanding to hear it from Mana's lips.

"The… Booty…" Mana moaned out with visual disgust permeating from her face. "… And strive to hurt not a single hair on anyone's head. Your men can fight back if challenged or attacked, I'll interfere and stop any fighting that I deem as having gotten too far."

"Sounds mighty lot like you taking command of the Captain's crew, missy…" Goodface winked with a bitter tease on his expression.

"Do you agree with these conditions or not, boatswain?" Mana didn't get into the argument about the issue with the man.

"Aye, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal," Goodface scratched his stubble with a pleased expression, having pulled the earlier shroud of bitterness away like a meek façade. "You've got yourself a deal, missy. We'll invite you to oversee our plunder when we settle on it. It just so happens that Polybius Island isn't too far off. I we're to honor the terms of your parley, it's the one detour we'll take before taking you straight to your mates."

"I'm relieved to have your word on that boatswain. My opinion on pirates may not have changed too much, but I'd never doubt your crew to be true to their word at least," Mana nodded.

She didn't enjoy offering this Polybius Island to these pirates. Sure, it would just be a bunch of gold that they'd "liberate" it from, or else Mana would interfere. Regardless of their terms, Mana was smarter than to think the pirates wouldn't test her by stretching the terms as far as they'd go. Likely they'll try something funny behind her back and she'll just have to be on her toes to put an end to it. Gold was one thing that Mana didn't particularly care about. She didn't understand its value over these self-proclaimed liberated seamen and the fact that Polybius Island could gather enough of it to tempt a passing-by Pirate Lord crew implied they didn't struggle all that much to gather it.

"What kind of island is this Polybius Island?" Mana asked Renlan while the two walked back to the crew quarters.

"It's a common place for us to visit. A helpless island of good-willed chaff that have signed off their backbones to some caveman-level religion. They believe everything has its own spirit inside it, that everything that exists is alive and should therefore be respected," Renlan shrugged.

"Yes. What kind of imbecile would believe something like that…" Mana let her eyes sink down and for her curls to fall over them.

"Oh, they're not just like pacifists, honey. Those guys believe EVERYTHING has its own life and is sacred. They talk to kettles, they're too afraid to cut down trees… It's because of that good and welcoming nature that they are a beloved visiting place of any passing by ship. Anyone is free to buy anything they find on the island off of them or stay and rest, as long as you promise to live by their rules. They're not keen on checking too tightly on that either so most people are so full of shit that they burn right through the wood they stock up on and there's nothing those backward spineless goons can do about it," Renlan shook her head, seeing Mana's deep-seated offense.

"The way you and the boatswain spoke of it, it makes it seem like you hit that island often," Mana noted.

"Only every time we pass by it," Renlan shrugged. "They're easy to rob too. They don't fight much because of their beliefs. Frankly, you don't even need to fret about it–we don't hit them too hard either. I must admit that their loving nature makes them very hard to hurt. They're like… Puppies or something. The puppies of plunder victims."

"I'll be the judge of that," Mana cut it short and finally let her foot touch the floor. A light dizziness hit her in the head after spending so much time floating about on her Mystical Wings jutsu. A few cracks of her neck left and right and some back flexing took care of that.

No pirate bothered Mana with challenges and attempts to throw her overboard that evening. The few times Mana peeked her nose out from her quarters, the cheerful rabble rousers invited her in for a game of cards, though they staked nothing on it. Knowing she risked her own well-being and presence on this ship, Mana even showed the drunk yet oddly lovable mooks a few card tricks and some ways one could cheat at cards. For an honor-driven bunch, these guys seemed to simply adore good cheating almost as much as genuine skill or luck.

Mana dreaded the yell that signaled for land ahead. Veteran crews, even ones that let their dealings hang loose, didn't just stumble onto random patches of land. The only reason the Flintory and her accompanying fleet would bump into the stony ridges of land was if the crew meant to make a pit stop there. Hearing the high-pitched bawl that echoed through the Flintory's deck made Mana roll off of her sheets and onto a tunneling Wind Release current of her making.

She didn't have the time to grab the handle of her door, instead Mana just tackled it open while riding the tunneling current and corrected her trajectory into a bountiful swoop that landed her right in the middle of the main deck. The rough-looking daredevils were already brandishing the weapons they preferred and practiced their meanest game faces even when Polybius' shores were still far away.

"Wow, those guys really let themselves go, haven't they?" a man-sized ninja-rat in a dirty tank top and a black beanie that matched the grim color of its body hair proclaimed while wrapping its long, worm-like fingers in barbed wire.

Mana was not entirely sure of what the ninja animal meant, though she had nothing to compare the current sight of Polybius to. She had never visited the place before, though Renlan's description made the place out to be as something inviting, serene and spiritual. A place with vast amounts of wealth, worth a consistent visit from even the crew of a Pirate Lord, yet also one that didn't fret too much handing all that wealth away just to avoid conflict.

Polybius didn't look all that wealthy from afar. It looked like a jagged pile of wet and grimy mountain spikes walling around a slushy swamp of mossy stone and tainted wood. Heavy clouds hung over Polybius and the island alone. It may have been a sign of the approaching evening, though, with pirates being as superstitious lot as any, Mana was already hearing rumbling amongst the crew.

"Do we really need to hit Polybius right now?"

"Now that you mention it, we've been picking on those guys lately, haven't we? We visited them three months ago, right?"

"Come to think of it, is it wise to land on Polybius? The crew of a Pirate Lord needs to weigh the potential for booty against the costs. We've got a large crew, so we need to go for the sweetest booty!"

A clay-orange shade of chakra signature flared up behind the crew. By now, Mana had been around it long enough to recognize it. She turned to confirm the parting crewmen with shaking eyes and gaping mouths, letting their captain through. Captain Flint wobbled out from the huddled back rows and made way for himself with shoulder nudges against the most curious to scout Polybius from the sea.

"Captain Flint!"

"It's Captain Flint, is he going to join us on the raid?"

"Alright, mates, we've been chasing that moray Ladron around for three days straight and we didn't have the chance to hit Polybius on our way to Getsugakure. They must have gotten fat and lazy without us to account to! Look at the state they devolved into, let's go squeeze them back into shape!" Captain Flint pumped his fist up, instantly reinvigorating his crew to roar and cheer for their charismatic leader. Even though the signs of battle wear were still present on him, even though he still showed scrapes whenever his jacket hung unnaturally over his tempered body and even though he still showed bandaged wrappings over his core, all the crew saw in their leader was something mythical and larger than life. Not a man that could feel pain or second guess himself.

"Something's wrong," Mana voiced her doubts to the Captain after he took command over the Flintory and the fleet back from the boatswain. "I sense far too many chakra signatures of a notable size out there. Polybius has a larger ratio of troublesome chakra signatures than a ninja village. Not to mention, they all just feel… Putrid."

"As long as you sail on my ship, you're a free lassie, landlubber. Feel free to sit this one out and hide from the briny smells of islanders and their rotten teeth," Captain Flint jested at Mana's expense.

"Is this how Polybius usually is?" Mana asked the man, knowing that she'll see Captain's true gut feeling about the situation in his reply.

"Usually my men win out on their signature knockout musk, though we've been absent from Polybius long enough for them to spend their coin on pies and let the jam rot their teeth out," Captain Flint shrugged. He may not have tried to hide it, but Mana saw he noticed differences and was contemplating what they could've meant for his crew somewhere in that rock-hard, sea-faring noggin of his. At least Mana could know that the old buccaneer was thinking about his crew and had the job in mind above fun and games.

"Polybius may have gone through a makeover, but they've been maintaining their pipelines. Those serpentine networks on the industrial sector look squeaky clean," Renlan noted, having brushed her way through the rowdy crew up to where she could rub against Mana's shoulders.

"Pipelines?" Mana wondered.

"On top of being an attractive pit stop of the second quarter of the North Ocean, Polybius is seated on a crag of natural gas. This entire rock that the settlement is built on is like a volcano for natural gas that's sticking out from the ocean's bottom. Right now, they're selling it to anyone that's coming here to buy, but they'd be leaving Getsugakure in the dust if they focused on drawing it out and actively delivering it to the whole continent," Renlan pointed out, dragging her long finger with cornflower-colored dyed rakes for fingernails across the ring of peat bog that had a pipeline system reminding of a continent-sized snake den.

The Flintory bounced across the rustling waves, parting through them like a knife sliced through a creamy cake. The seas surrounding Polybius had been so deep that the waters were denim-blue all around it. Usually, islands had dangerous rings of shallows with craggy rocks surrounding them, which was why the sailors Mana sailed with avoided unnecessary pits stops and sailed right to the destination, planning their voyages as far away from needless brushes against island shores as possible. Polybius truly was a molar sticking out of the ocean.

Despite the menacing march of the Flintory's fleet, Polybius' pier appeared thoroughly unimpressed by the new arrival. With an uneasy scan of the place, Mana's eyes moved from one hunched figure haunting the piers to the next. Like uniformed soldiers, each sailor working on the pier wore rubbery seaweed-color coats with hoods. It felt flat out mad to know that not even a full Pirate Lord armada surrounding the island's shores earned a single look from the shambling locals, rare as they were.

"I guess we truly have been away for far too long, mates! The locals forgot all about who we are!" Captain Flint cheered with a saber raised over his head as he barked and growled with a peal of masculine bawling at his crew. Flint's inspired display of hilarity made most of the disturbed crew cringe and chuckle, though the vibes were still much gloomier than Mana imagined a raiding party to have.

"Either that, or we've become too common around these parts to where the locals don't even bat an eye…" Renlan sighed with a dry and husky remark, meant mostly to those directly around her as opposed to the loudmouthed way of Flint engineering the mood of the whole crew. "Still want to tag along?" Renlan turned to Mana with a teasing look.

"Aberrant or not, it is my responsibility to prevent anyone from getting killed," Mana replied without skipping a beat of showing a sign of lost composure. Sensing the vibes from the crew, this seemed like a perfect time for one of the freaked pirates to accidentally get spooked by a local and fire a pocket-sized cannonball at them from a dispenser barrel some of them relied on.

"Alright, maggots!" Captain Flint raised a genuine cannon over his head as lightly as he'd have raised a hand cannon and fired the fiery and explosive package into the sky. "That'll be 'nuff snoozing for you! Pirate Lord Blue, Captain Flint, the Adventurous Sword of the Four Seas has come for his tributes!"

Finally, as the torrent of flamboyant and terrifying pirate warrior spilling out like blood and guts from a cut belly onto the pier flooded the shores, the crew of the raiding Flintory earned a few stray stares. Almost immediately the sight of ring-shaped, mustard-colored eyes, pale and wet faces and sharp, razor teeth made everyone's afternoon snacks churn inside their stomachs. A tall and muscular pirate with a battle-worn face and spiky red hair grabbed hold of the coat of a passing by local and lifted them over his head with a crude shake.

"What the fuck's going on here? Have all of you caught the same flu or something?" the scarred pirate growled while shaking the Polybian though the local still gazed somewhere far-off into the rowdy seas with a wet, salad-colored drool tapping on the floor from his mouth, extending all the way from the lip to the wooden bridge hanging over the moor.

"Maybe these freaks killed everyone and took over the island?" another pirate wearing nothing but a blood-soaked shirt with wet and crimson-colored skin as if he had been thoroughly flayed and lived to tell the tale spoke up. This one had pronounced facial features, though the grand theory of flaying was debunked upon a second look that suggested the man being of crimson skin with his bone and sinew being thoroughly concealed underneath.

"Take us to the Presider! We've come for the tribute!" Captain Flint barked out with clenched fists and a wide, battle-ready stance. Mana bit her lip, hoping that whatever malady befell the islanders didn't affect their social skills or make them aggressive, in which case she'd have to make a mess of things and interfere.

"We are all the Presider," a pale-faced local with a face rich with warts spoke up, displaying terrifying flashes of a tongue covered in octopus-like suckers.

"If you wish to parley, Pirate Lord, you may parley with any of us," another rubbery worm-man turned around and spoke in an identically bitter voice that best could've been compared to the speech of a man that had a mouthful of gravel stuffed down their throat with no ability to spit it all out with the grains of gravel constantly shifting up and down their irritated and dried throat.

"Aye, I wish to parley, landlubbers, my proposition is all of your tribute, here and now!" Captain Flint rolled off his sleeve, demonstratively winding back a punch. As Mana could've testified, if the Pirate Lord truly wished to pound either one of the speakers, he'd have sent them flying to a different continent faster than either one of them could have blinked.

"A grievous proposition…" another local turned to face the Pirate Lord and his crew.

"Ambitious…"

"Greedy…"

"Distasteful…"

"Demeritorious…"

"Ungodly…"

More and more nigh identical chubby pale fish-men wrapped in rubbery overcoats turned from haunting the pier district by shambling for no reason and with no apparent purpose to pointing at the Captain with accusatory looks on their faces.

"And that would be all for me…" Renlan scratched the back of her head. "You guys can have my split. When people start talking and pointing in unison, I'm out."

True to her word, the pirate turned tail and boldly walked back to the Flintory and up the lowered board back to the ship, hopping over the edge and onto the main deck from which part of the fleet's major fighting force stared on ahead at the horror movie unfolding on Polybius' shores.

"Leaving?"

"Ambitious…"

"Greedy…"

"Vile…"

"Wicked…"

"Wrong…"

A thick pirate with a decorated, round, bronze plate over their face as a mask charged on ahead with his sizeable arms holding the handles of each of his two swords crossed behind his back. The loud sizzle of lightning and a bright flash of blue light made the pirates stumble away from Mana as a jolt of Lightning Release wrapped around both of the pirate's blades right behind him. In a snap, the jolts dissolved into sharp bursts that shattered the man's swords into splinter-sized pieces of the material it was made from. Having found himself unarmed, the jumpy pirate staggered back in line behind his comrades.

"These islanders aren't violent. Until they resist violently, I'll only stand violence to protect your life. You may act like thieves, not robbers," Mana spoke up to the displeased faces looking at her from all around.

"You're going to make this challenging, aren't you?" Captain Flint dragged his hand across his scorned face, looking like he was about to ask Mana for a second round of a deathmatch then and there.

"What's the matter, Captain? Can't handle a minor challenge?" Mana teased the man, targeting that which he held the dearest–his pride.

"You strike an ambitious bargain, Captain. Your lack of humility is almost entertaining. Allow me to offer you a counter for your parley. We will give you your trinkets and earthly possessions you seek. Though your ambition is boundless, Captain, it will take time to gather it for you. Please, enjoy your stay in our domain, eat and drink your fill until we pay you what you are due," all the pale and moist, noseless shamblers spoke up in unison.

This was good. A drunk pirate was a content pirate. There were plenty of musicians and other artisans of various branches of art, entertainers and professionals that only needed a glass of liquid bravery to fill the halls with their mastery. Drunk and sated pirates will tell jokes and stories, they will sing, they will gamble and they will brawl, however, they won't be butchering anyone or anything. It was a good thing that Mana couldn't stand the bitter burn of alcohol. She'll be able to watch the men from the side and fulfill her duty in keeping both sides safe.

"I take it you won't object to a warm meal and the bottom of the mug to drown sorrows in?" Captain Flint grumbled, turning to Mana.

"By no means," Mana shook her head with a satisfied look on her face. She expected this visit to turn either into a grisly scene of a horror movie or a war documentary, though, somehow, against all odds, it may have just turned out to be alright.

This must have been the most awkward, and creepy party Mana had seen. The silent trip to the town hall across the grave and gloomy town teeming with pale and round-shaped, razor-teethed locals staring from the alleyways and corners with reflective pairs of eyes and snarling louder than the howling evening gale. It wasn't as if the cold had been bothering Mana or that the moisture of the island weather had any capacity to hurt her, though the magician wrapped herself in the military coat she's nicked from aboard the Flintory. Just like wrapping herself in her covers helped when she was a child, feeling thick cloth brushing against her skin helped her feel a bit more in control.

The locals took the rowdy pirates to the hall, where there were more pale, slug-skinned and hairless locals rampant across the building. They had been doing some rearranging for a little while now and had arranged the tables from the conference rooms and canteens in a formation that could have housed all of Captain Flint's crew under one massive, round roof.

The moment that everyone's bottoms pressed to the chairs, the doors from the corridors leading to chambers all across the town hall burst open with hooded locals slipping out with trays and drinks. Mana just couldn't keep her eyes away from the locals' unusual appearance. Not that they looked strange to her that offset her. During her years serving as a kunoichi she's seen plenty of strange-looking things, in fact, she's sort of come to enjoy the strange and the macabre in a way. It was how unnatural it looked on these poor townsfolk that took Mana aback.

The movements of the townsfolk looked unnatural, as if they were forcing their movements and not in complete control over her own bodies. Sometimes, some of the townsfolk moved stiffly, and some of them struggled to move right at all. While none of the trays or jugs went down, their uncanny movement manners gave Mana some major creeps. Still, as she kept on telling herself, being creeped out was better than seeing these two groups at each other's throats.

Were there chakra signatures emitted from these trays and jugs? This couldn't have been right… The townsfolk served the trays by sliding them across the table to each pirate, eager to be served and dig into some fine seafood. They served the drinks by pouring them from the jugs. When the filled mugs slammed down onto the table before the rambunctious pirates, Mana could breathe easier, realizing that the cups themselves lacked the notable chakra signature of the trays and the jug.

Perhaps the food just had something to do with a living, beating part of some animal? Maybe there truly was nothing nefarious afoot? Though the chakra signature didn't feel like any animal. Even if it was a still living animal organ struggling with the fact that its life had been over, it'd have emanated a meek and difficult to pick up signature, whereas these trays flat out screamed at Mana that something alive and quite wicked had been wrangling and teeming inside.

"May I ask what you're serving?" Mana tried asking the nearest local, but they completely no-sold the question by ignoring the fact Mana existed.

"You should just relax, eat up and have a drink. When you go back to the ship, it'll be back to the sailor's diet for you. All of us, really…" Captain Flint nudged Mana with his elbow. He still had some tough bandaging over parts of his body as he was still recovering from his deathmatch with Mana. This made the nudge a bit more irritating than it'd have normally been.

"I'll be fine, you shouldn't drink either. You're in charge of this raid, remember?" Mana turned a strict look back at the captain, who had already been relaxing after pulling out a whole turkey from under the tray. The sight of a familiar greasy avian made Mana even more confused. The food didn't really look off. Given her training with old man Aporius in improving her cooking skills, Mana could tell that the meat had been a bit undercooked, though it had some premium spices and herbs on it that weren't all too common on the main continent. Obviously, she'd have to take a nibble of the food to tell for certain.

"Raiding goes better when you're piss-drunk. Trust me," Captain Flint waved his hand in dismissal and ripped a whole jug off of the hands of a slug-skinned local with so much force that his hood slid back. While it revealed nothing that Mana hadn't already seen from the local weirdos, the local began hissing and gritting their razor teeth rows against each other, suggesting that they didn't like the roughhousing. Before Mana could ask the buccaneer to see inside the jug, the man flipped it over his face, spilling less than half of the alcohol-reeking olive-colored liquid over his face and chest while drinking in the jug's majority.

"You're gonna have to keep this shit going," the Captain flung the jug over his back. The pale and slimy townsman cried out in peril, as if his own life depended on it, and rushed to catch the jug. Mana would have cast a Wind Release jutsu to catch it had she not felt so enthralled by what distressed this local so much about this jug and what exactly lurked inside of it.

A shrill, shattering sound filled the hall. In the shattered clay remains and the sticky, noxious liquid there was a mysterious meaty clump. Like a pulsing tumor of cells, littered with round, razor-teethed mouth holes, eyes wildly scanning around it and tiny, hair-long tentacles waving to move the poor creature away from curious eyes. Now that the jug had shattered, there was no denying that it was this creature to whom the chakra signature Mana had been bothered by belonged.

"You fuck-ass!" Captain Flint grabbed hold of the local and pulled him in, winding his fist back and slamming it right into the center. The wallop sent the poor townsman flying across the room and slamming into the wall with an indented face. Without delay, slime began oozing over the indentation on the face and slowly refilling the haunting shape. "You almost made me drink that ugly freak of nature up!"

"You should just humbly drink the liquor and enjoy the food…" a hooded townsman bowed his head respectfully. A square-faced pirate with a tall and thick, hairy body and a bowtie tied around his meaty neck stood up and took the lid off of the random nearby tray, then plunged his hairy hands into the jello and ripped it apart, leaving an exposed growth of slug-like skin, tentacles, eyes and mouth wrangling and waving about in the plate.

"The food's all tumors! IT'S - ALL - FUCKING - TUMORS!" a pirate with thick glasses and a red military coat on a shirt two sizes too small exclaimed, throwing as much food as they could reach down on the ground while turning to point at the freaky locals queued up behind him. The hooded figures all lost their hoods, crawling back and hissing at the pirates with madness beaming from their expressions. In their barely intelligible hisses, one could have identified various manners of requests to eat and drink.

"Kill 'em!" a pirate with black, greasy hair pulled out a pair of dispensers loaded with smaller cannonballs fit for firing from hand cannons. Before anyone could make a move, Mana weaved a hand seal and let out a somber whistle, drowning the room in sweet and soothing illusion of pleasant sensations. The pirates grabbed their chests, bellies or nether regions, collapsing on the ground unable to cope with the sudden explosion of pleasure across their entire bodies from the illusionary stimulation forcing their brains to dabble in some very real endorphin-based chemistry.

It wouldn't take them longer than a few minutes until their bodies got used to the pleasure, and they began fighting back against the illusion. At that point, Mana's attempts to pacify the situation would have been half as effective. Thus, Mana had to do what she could to settle the situation before that happens and she actually had to take on both sides herself to try to keep them from killing each other. Or… Doing whatever it was those locals intended to do to them.

"Calm down, no one's killing any…!" Mana was about to lay her terms straight, but a warning sensation from behind her made her lean to the side. The tumorous growth flung itself, hurling across the room with a single whip of its muscular tendrils. It sought to attach itself to Mana, thus the fact that the magician leaned to the side avoiding meeting it had saved her from whatever it had in store for her.

This assault only aggravated the rest of the trays and jugs to rattle, flip and burst, revealing the nightmarish tumorous manifestations of hair, skin, mouths, eyes and flesh therein. The sluggish locals, appearing only barely slowed down by Mana's illusion, reared their rows of razor teeth and moist hands, dripping with slime as they prepared to lunge at the magician.

"Serenity Arcana!" Mana clapped her hands together, forming a makeshift ethereal armored rim around her with flowing chakra-based curtains out in front of her and a coffin-shaped cubicle that prevented any of the living tumors from lunging at her and trying to blindside her as they'd only hit Serenity Arcana and flop back on the floor. With a fling of her hand, Mana commanded her armor ninjutsu to produce chakra knife constructs and fling them at the locals, sticking them to the walls or the floor by their long and baggy cloaks while pinning down most of the tumors she had her eyes on.

Upon being impaled, the growths just thrashed in agony and flopped lifelessly on the table or the floor. The Serenity Arcana stage around Mana vanished with tall top-hat cylinders manifesting themselves over the present locals and shutting them underneath. With a thrust of Mana's hand, the cylinders burst outside, carrying the locals with them as far as Mana could still hold her connection to the armor.

"What are you doing?" chief engineer Marat growled at her while fighting off the pleasurable sensations. While he was the first to rise, he wasn't even close to overcoming the Sweet Lullaby Jutsu as his legs were wobbly and crossed and he couldn't stiffen one muscle no matter how hard he tried.

"Exactly what I told you I'd do. I'm making sure that no one kills anyone. Now, this has gone out of hand. Return to the Flintory, we can stop by another island. One that's not dealing with… All that…" Mana sighed, recalling what she had learned of compromising. This would put an even tighter deadline around her throat as she risked missing the Allied Ninja vessel more and more with each diversion such as this one, but it couldn't have been helped. She needed to let these pirates fill up their pockets so that they would stop getting in her way. Some throwaway coins were a worthy trade for the safety of her friends.

"No. We'll cut our way through the town and squeeze every last coin it offers. Then, we'll even it to the ground," Captain Flint proclaimed after rolling on his back to pant while staring at the shaking illuminator over his head. "They've picked this fight, no one's got any right telling us to back out from it. You told us we had the right to defend ourselves, lassie!"

"This isn't self-defense," Mana crossed her arms, hearing hissing and howling noises outside. Windows started shattering, revealing dark and moist reflections of a clumped together mob of corrupted townsfolk. They didn't use any candles, for they needed no light. They just snarled and twitched in the rain, waiting for their killing urge to flare up, at which point they'd storm the hall and rip apart anything and everything in their way.

"Get real, missy!" boatswain Goodface yelled out. "Look at those beasties, they ain't human anymore!"

"You don't know that," Mana lashed back, approaching the shattered windows and looking out and into the street teeming with snarling, slug-skinned Polybians. "Something's not right about them. My illusions aren't very effective against them. We need to get back to the ship. I may be able to make us the way without killing anyone, but I need you to listen to me."

"No, you listen to us!" Marat finally got it in himself to walk straight. "Have your illusions ever failed to work on someone or something human?"

"They only fail if someone doesn't have the brain capacity for the illusion to work or if someone is of a split mind. In instances of a swarm mind or the person hosting another entity within their body," Mana replied, realizing how unlikely the lackluster effect of her genjutsu should have been on ordinary islanders.

"Neither of these options leave them as humans, do they?" Marat pleaded his case. "If they're lacking in the brain department, they can't feel the hurt we put them through. If they're being controlled by something else, there's nothing we can do about it either. Look at how their bodies have mutated, changes like that don't just go back."

"You seem to work under the illusion that we just want these islanders dead, missy," Captain Flint got back on one knee in a single roll on his front. "Polybius has been a good thing to us. We could always have some fun, a neat drink and fine food here, not to mention bountiful tributes. Was it technically racketeering? Sure. But none of us want the good thing we had here to go away, but it's time to look reality in the eyes–Polybius is done. Time to take everything valuable that's left and cross this rock off our maps."

"While we're at each other's throat…" boatswain Goodface stood back up on shaky, drunkard's legs, still clutching at his gut and leaning forward heavily. "Are we sure we can even hurt those guys?"

The eyes of the fallen local that laid knocked out by the Captain shot wide open and with grisly, bony cracks he rose to his feet. Shrieking bloody murder, he rushed at Mana from behind. Boatswain Goodface rushed to pull out a scroll tucked under his belt and unravel it before him. "Need for Mead!" he chanted out as a blank picture of what seemed like a wanted or a missing persons poster lit up with bright light and spewed a whole barrel, shooting toward the running creep.

Mana leaned down, letting the keg slam into the rushing local. The pair even had Mana fooled as, unexpectedly to her, Marat pulled out a hand cannon and sent a fist-sized cannonball sizzling with black gunpowder crashing into the belly of the keg. A bright, infernal blast resonated through the hall. The bright flash and the rampant tongues of flames spread through the town hall, making the snarling townsfolk stumble back in dazed stupor over the sudden emergence of light directly in front of them. Their will to rend, tear and crunch returned to them once they saw Captain Flint's merry crew spilling out from the burning town hall, brandishing their weapons yet still a bit dazzled.

The heat and pain from the blast helped them shake off the wildest pleasures their bodies could manifest, laying siege on them all at once, though they still weren't in the safe. Blazing wreckage stacked on top of an azure-glowing top hat crumbled off to the side, with the chakra armor vanishing from around Mana. The magician looked around, realizing that the pirates had gone utterly rogue on her and went off to loot, brawl and plunder to their hearts' contents. Meanwhile, the poor local that they served the keg falsely labeled as "mead" laid in grotesque giblets before her.

This meant war.

By the time that Mana released the chakra armor and blasted out the wreckage with a fireball from a kneeling position, her seemingly excessive door busting measures paled in comparison to the chaos taking place outside. Engaging her Mystical Wings Jutsu, Mana took it to the air above the ground to both elude the busy crowds of the bustling, uncanny locals that stood and let the downpour soak their faces until they saw motion to fix their attention on, as well as to race to where she was needed sooner.

A pale pirate in a pink military coat with golden decorations, a long black ponytail, shades, and a goatee hid underneath a metal cage. The pirate appeared to be injured, as he was drawn to the ground and cowered inside of the cage that was meant to restrain the enemy. Despite how the seaman used this technique, it may have been this quick thinking that let him pay his life off with just a pint of blood and not the entire thing.

The locals reached into the cage, despite the occasional effort from the pink-coated pirate's part to shut the lid around his cage and send red-hot sludge of boiling ground down the walls of his cage in a fountain-like spray. Despite the scorching coating of magma pouring down from above, it was as if something had possessed these locals to push through. Strangely enough, they didn't appear to be getting injured either. Their skin turned charred and littered with pearl-white blisters but, when they burst, they didn't release pus. Instead, they burst open with wrangling jade ethereal tentacles. One of them wrapped around the cage and threatened to pop it like a can in a hand.

"Shura Release: Fever Heaver!" Mana clapped her hands, canceling her Mystical Wings to flip vertically over her front while surrounding herself in indigo-colored fireballs that blasted off in the general direction of the enemy at the speed of the thunderclap, riding electrical jolts like a comet's tail.

The locals growled and thrashed about as the clumps of flames and lightning punched at their chests, blasting them aside as they surged super-heated flames throughout their entire bodies. The indigo flames burst outward through every orifice while leaving extensive damage in the systems of each attacker. Mana wavered for a second after landing on her feet, acting out of instinct to try and prevent the pink-coat pirate from getting squashed, though now she was terrified she went overboard.

That was until ethereal jade tentacles began sprouting from every place that she saw Shura Release blazing from before. Little remained of men and women that were struck, so much deformation and mangling and chakra tendrils all around that Mana became a firm subscribed to the idea that the Polybians were never alive to begin with. The vibrant jade light of the energy constructs slithering out from every orifice and every strand of flesh it manifested from brightened up the down-pouring gloom of the evening as the tentacles wrapped around one another and reached all the way to the clouds.

"For the record, I am allowed to fight that?" the ponytail and shades pirate weaved his hands together in a preparatory hand seal position.

"Please do…" Mana muttered, pushing the wet hair away from her face. She weaved her hands together, creating dozens of shadow clones of various Nature Releases, drastically slashing at her chakra reserves but hoping that by spreading herself to as many fields of battle across the entire island she could save many more lives.

Seeing what she now saw before her, she knew that she'd need to devote all her attention to each mass of identical sluggish tentacle ghouls of Polybius Island. The clones flickered away while Mana began building Serenity Arcana around her. Her options were limited–she needed a leg construct to fight at her best and she had to choose between greater defensive options while using Serenity Arcana at the expense of smaller array of jutsu she could choose to use alongside it or to use Mystical Wings and a slightly larger roster of techniques since she was much more accustomed to a jutsu she knew from the beginning of her career and had perfected by the time of the finals of the Chuunin Exams.

The growling Polybians began pouring from the alleyways and throwing themselves out the windows. Caring not for their lives that they lost upon smashing their faces at the ground and breaking their spines as from their open fractures, wrangling jade tentacles sprouted and rag dolled their husk bodies across the battlefield. Mana's newly met pirate acquaintance fired a barrage of burning stone projectiles from underground, knocking most of the Polybians he could see aside while Mana let the Shura Release curtains flow freely on the magical stage of Serenity Arcana while flinging thousands of chakra knives in each direction.

No damage appeared to stick. Whenever a burning boulder smashed a Polybian underneath it, jade tentacles sprouted from underneath and shoved the boulder aside. Even as a squished mass of blood and guts, the Polybian served as a host of the malicious chakra flowing inside them, hosting something wicked. When a chakra knife thumped into the chest, the eye or a limb of a berserk Polybian, they opened wounds from which only more tentacles sprouted out. More death-dealing tendrils to worry about. A few times now, Mana had to turn and direct the blizzard of chakra knives toward her magma-spewing comrade to free him from grievous bondage just so he could watch her back in return. This wouldn't do. This was a losing battle, as Mana saw no way to victory.

"Flee, find Captain Flint and tell him to command his men back to the fleet. Sail away from Polybius as far as possible and hope that the Polybians don't pursue from the deep," Mana panted at the man who had lost his flamboyant coat and fought in a dirty and torn sleeveless shirt, striped blue and white.

"Didn't expect to see you sacrificing your life for some lowly pirates. Thought you couldn't stand us and everything we stood for?" the man panted while riding a boulder from atop of a bursting torrent of molten stone he drowned the swarming, relentless Polybian abominations in. Tentacles sprouted from underneath the layers of magma, whipping the pirate aside and sending him through the wall of a nearby bar.

"Go!" Mana barked. "I'll do what I can to assist your retreat and prevent further casualties. This raid is over!"

Clapping her hands, Mana took it in the skies in a tunneling air current, before setting the Mystical Wings Jutsu ablaze with azure flame ailerons. Flapping the wings just once, Mana let them dispel in a halo of Shura Release flames that spread in a round, ring-shaped expanse and engulfed anyone careless enough not to flee for cover. By now she was far beyond caring for the well-beings of the Polybians, as they showed no signs of being anything but empty husks for whatever parasite lived within.

It wasn't like she had anything to worry about either, since the Polybians appeared utterly immune to such trivial matters as pain, physical damage or demise. All they knew was a thirst for rabid violence and each time their bodies were ravaged, it only served as a catalyst to sprout more and more of whatever devious entity lurked within their bodies. Riding on a collapsed wall surfboard, atop in arcing bounces of torrential magma, the ponytail pirate fled.

Stepping out from the azure flames, the Polybians snarled with tentacles sprouting from their eyes and mouths by the dozens. Their rabidness forced Mana to slowly retreat, while grabbing the busted end of an electrical pole and channel Lightning Release through it to send Magic Spark Barrage Jutsu lightning spheres at her pursuers, solely to keep them at bay. Sensing the pirate having reached the general area teeming with familiar chakra signatures, Mana landed on the ground and provided the Polybians with a puzzle of whack-a-ninja by hiding underneath hundreds of Serenity Arcana hats, most of them hid nothing but their frustration underneath and weren't worth the hassle and effort they showed at breaching through.

Mana's hands felt like they were full of lead. She felt lucky that despite the best attempts of the wretched abominations that the Polybians had become, they still couldn't breach through a more advanced stage of chakra armor, so she was mostly safe underneath the chakra top hat of her production. It was only when the Polybians began losing interest in the flashy hats scattered across the district that they forced Mana to reveal herself.

Kneeling on one knee and panting, she must've looked like attractive prey, since more than the majority of Polybians she had attracted to the district dashed right at her. From what Mana gathered, the rest wouldn't catch up to the pirates before they retreat to the fleet. Using the fleet's weaponry, the pirates should stand a decent chance at keeping the Polybians at bay until they set sail and, once they move further from the island, they'd be safe. Or so the theory went…

Deciding to preserve some chakra for a grimmer time, Mana merely used Mystical Wings boosts to hop on air pockets to assist her kicks, slides and trips or to compensate for her missing limb when she needed decent evasive measures. Tentacles were swinging quite literally everywhere and navigating the in the jade hell forged by violent response was quite comparable to trying to crawl through a black hedge maze without being cut by the thorns.

Even if her heart fluttered each time that Mana whipped a resonant kick at the jaw of a Polybian only for them to snap back in place with a snarl or a husky wheeze when their airwaves were thoroughly stuffed with a forest of tentacles, Mana operated through instinct and the need to fight on itself and not pursuing an idea of a dream of survival. The diversion of her and her clones that she could both sense and see dissipating, leaving behind a fiery inferno, a vortex of cutting whirlwind or a lightning storm behind portrayed that they've served their purpose at assisting Captain Flint's retreat.

Now came the time to fight. A tentacle smacked across Mana's chest, tearing her dress at the chest section and sending her rolling aside through the dirt and smacking through the saloon door inside of a local tavern. A storm of tentacles burst inside and quickly flooded the place. Mana raced her hands to clap for a Serenity Arcana hat but she found herself crucified and suspended in mid-air as tendrils swiftly wrapped around her wrists and her lone ankle, dragging her in mid-air only for an ocean of jade tentacles to burst through the tavern doors, the walls and the windows and utterly flood the place in jade chakra constructs that blasted the entire building apart into a storm of splinters and bent out of shape steel decorations.

It seemed hopeless, tentacles created an ethereal mass of washing energy around her, utterly smothering her from all directions as they tried forcing their way through Mana's mouth. Even if opening her eyes felt like it would blind Mana from the all-encompassing jade light that flapped madly like a krakenesque titan inhabiting the meek industrial island settlement, she didn't need to see anything to sense those familiar chakra signatures of tumorous flesh balls washing across the tentacle mass.

A surge of Magician's Touch, a jutsu she had learned to use without hand seals for just such a time, rippled through the jade tentacles, making them squirm and leaving an opening for Mana to squirm into dirty and wet freedom to. Soaked dirt splat into her face and grimed her torn-up dress and coat when the ninja magician flopped on the ground and rolled aside from an impending barrage of tentacle smashing. The mud was all over her eyes and the tentacles felt like they were everywhere.

A cracking whip at her back bent Mana's body out of shape backwards, sending her smashing into another building and leaving her with the familiar taste of blood and her own shaky teeth in her mouth. Mana dragger her face across the soaked tatters of her military coat and began crawling away. A bunch of tentacles wrapped around the building she was in and smashed it to bits with a single power grab. A rain of shrapnel, glass and metal poured down Mana's body, pinning her down. A tentacle wrapped around her throat and began pulling her out from all the wreckage. It was something to which all the fallen building adamantly disagreed as Mana moaned in agony. It felt like her body being pulled apart and her spine churned for a second before the wreckage gave way.

Drool and blood lingered off her busted lip when Mana let another surge of Magician's Touch dissolve the chakra tentacle and fell on the dirt again. These were pure chakra, so they, like few other things, served the Chakra Over Matter principle. Stronger chakra constructs broke weaker ones with no resistance. The tentacles were countless and growing more numerous still with each injury that one of the Polybians sustained, but they also were relatively weak individually.

Mana found a hand cannon on the ground and launched a few blind shots in the air. One of them hit a poor Polybian square in the gut, leaving them with a hole in the abdomen that soon gave way to a washing torrent of manifesting tentacles that took no time at all to close the opening down. The rampant fields of tendrils began merging into larger masses, dwarfing entire buildings. The pirates had been retreating, Mana could sense it. She did what she could, though she had no intention of dying if there was anything she could do to help it either.

A colossal tentacle raced to smash the entire district Mana was in, moving toward the ground at a meteoric speed that Mana's dirt-covered, watery and bloodshot eyes struggled to keep up with. A wooden contraption flung a fusillade of barrels flying through the air, alongside came a blizzard of daggers that thumped into the barrels, causing them to blow up and rattle the titanic tentacle. It only slowed it down, but when Captain Flint came howling through the air with Water Release enhanced fists, screaming like a madman with a thunderous pound that threw the island-smasher tendril aside like a rag doll, Mana realized what was going on.

They came for her.

"Locker Shut!" Captain Flint roared, shoving the tentacle aside with a final push of his fist. He rode the backlash of the force to flip backward and glide across an invisible network of chakra threads to the ground.

"Renlan-san…" Mana grumbled, turning her head at a tall and slender feminine shape waving her hands through the air. With all the jade madness around them, it was difficult to make out the faint blue glow of chakra coating over her steel wire.

"Don't get all frothy on me, landlubber, those guys decided they had to pick you up before setting sail so I had to come to fill a girl quota and bust the sausage fest, that's all," Renlan teased Mana with a playfully innocent shrug.

"Lightning Release: Screen Beam!" Boatswain Goodface's television and stilt combo wobbled across the chaotic battlefield, sending white sizzling lightning beams across that sliced through any jade tentacles it came to contact with. When the tentacles fell apart, both severed parts flopped helplessly until they slowly disintegrated.

"Even if you can be a bit of a stuck-up grog, you're still the VIP we need to deliver!" chief-engineer Marat flashed a hand full of knives and another one with a blank poster filled with glowing sealing glyphs on it.

"Aye, if we left our crew behind, no one would be bold enough to be free and take a risk," Captain Flint declared after landing near Mana with a pained expression on his face, still feeling the burn from the beating he took on the Getsugakure pier besides whatever punishment the Polybian tentacles left him flogged with.

Marat waved his armed hand, sending a wave of daggers at the nearest tentacle. It wasn't like he had to be exact with it, with the entire island swarming in green tendrils. The blades punched into a jade tentacle, though besides glowing fractures it failed to do much lasting damage. Flashing a thumb that had a cut on it, Marat dragged it across the poster to leave a smear of red on it. After a loud pop and a cloud of smoke shot out from the poster, the chief engineer of Captain Flint's fleet waved a large contraption with four wheels over his head that had one leg armed with a disc saw and leaped into a mass of infestation.

The tendrils weaved around the diving pirate, avoiding the slash while snapping back with a thudding whip that caught Marat square in the face and knocked him rolling aside. Another tentacle slammed onto the ground and smashed the improvised wheeled saw-arm gadget to pieces. Sensing a chance, Goodface stomped with his ship-sized stilt legs and smashed a tendril only for another to lash onto the middle of the stilt and pull it in two. Goodface plopped down, and the shock smashed the television set he was hiding inside of, leaving the boatswain to flop out, grazing against the glass of the busted screen for a few scrapes.

A whole hedge of tendrils rushed in from the sides to batter the fallen ninja, but Mana raced through the hand seals to release a storm of Lightning Release chakra from her entire body that channeled into a forest of Lightning Release swords in mid-air. "Magic Skewer Jutsu!" Mana chanted out as the forest of Lightning Release swords slammed with a meaty thump and pinned the rushing tentacles to the ground.

Renlan shot through the air like a graceful arrow, stomping her foot into the face of a rushing Polybian and kicking him aside. Even if the she-pirate restrained herself, the rolling chubby found himself impaled on a ruined fence and a handful of tentacles burst from his perforated core, thrashing wildly in all directions.

"We need to stop hurting them. They sprout tentacles upon taking damage!" Mana let the pirate crew in on the know, just in case they hadn't caught on to it yet. "Maybe if we can destroy the tentacles without hurting the Polybians, we can finally get our window to leave."

"Fifteen Dead Men!" Captain Flint bellowed, soaring through the air as nine aquatic fists swung in a flurry of blows from behind him, battering the larger tentacles that shook in the sky, threatening to flatten, crush and sink the entire island. It seemed that the captain had little trouble shifting his focus to the tentacles, though he had a much easier job doing so while fighting on the rooftop level compared to the more grounded battlefield of his crew.

Seeing the drastic shift in strategy being employed, the Polybians appeared to change their approach too. A quivering lump of cut-up flesh and slimy fat, twitching while overwhelmed with tentacles manifested from their body, pulled out a bone-knife and dragged it across its chest. The cut was deep enough to open the blubber up from shoulder to hip and unleash a thudding swarm of tentacles on the outside.

Chief engineer Marat rolled backward, slipping another rolled up poster and unraveling it mid-roll, only to reveal it while dashing back from a racing thwack from the rushing tendrils. The lashing tentacles disappeared in a cloud of smoke after a dull pop, but only a spew of bright jade sparks came out. Chief engineer Marat rolled out on an oval-shaped motorbike with a pair of saw-toothed belts rolling over it. Like a giant crawler belt. With this bustling engine of gore, the chief engineer began racing across the battlefield, bumping and pulling in any ethereal tendril coming into contact with the rotating belts like a meat-grinder.

This proved somewhat effective at clearing out the blinding jade madness of the ground level. In fact, so much of it became clearer that Mana found herself stunned by a meek chakra signature far off in the north-western part of the island. It was such an insignificant feeling that she'd have never picked it up normally, especially not with the whole island drowned in this nightmarish jade smokescreen of sensory confusion, but the fact that dozens of these tiny signatures were clumped together made Mana not just notice it, but become obsessed by it.

"Thinking of splitting after we bet our butts on the line coming back for you?" Renlan teased Mana after pulling her arms to the side and sending a handful of unaware Polybians smacking against tentacles of their own making. The resulting whip splattered them utterly and only manifested fifty more tentacles per person, though there was solace in knowing that these Polybians were too badly thrashed to produce any more.

"There's something else here. Something weak. These islanders may not be the only living thing on this island. I need to check it out," Mana muttered in return. Without caring too much about watching her own back, the magician just turned and flickered away, racing toward the cluster of tiny chakra signatures.

It wasn't like the Polybians would've just let her go… A full force of lashing limbs scrambled to capture Mana and squeeze her eyeballs out from her collapsing body while forcing her guts out like a toothpaste. The shift in attention became so noticeable that boatswain Goodface looked up after realizing that he's been swinging his scimitar at nothing for a few of his last swings.

Not even Mana expected this much of a drastic shift in focus from the seemingly chaotic tentacles. It was as if they worked unified by a lone purpose of capturing the fleeing magician and punishing her violently and definitively for the sin of noticing something that the Polybians were trying to hide so vehemently. This curiosity made Renlan and Captain Flint unite in jumping to watch Mana's back. The swarm of lifeless tentacles didn't respond in kind. Renlan's sharp shrill filled the air as they swiftly wrapped around her from a mid-air position, with the puppeteer having no clever traps to offer them in return. Captain Flint found himself punching, kicking, stomping and biting at a whole horde of tendrils that sought to wrap around him and smother him too.

An adamantine lock around her lone ankle made Mana exclaim in shock that the tentacles caught her during mid-flicker. Their speed and reaction time, given their lack of a nervous system, brain, sensory organs or a central body mass, continuously shocked Mana with each success they scored. Just as the tendril intended to smack her face-first into the ground and dust her ribs whole, a clanking snap later, Mana felt free again.

"Maybe the landlubber's got the right idea. No reason to stay here and fight this thing anymore!" Marat exclaimed, having used a colossal pair of scissors pushed by automated steam pistons from the side to assist the cutting venture to free Mana from the perilous grip before he rushed to aid his other crewmates.

"No way in hell I'm giving up!" Captain Flint wheezed. "Whatever this Kraken is, if it has a hell to go to, I'll send it straight down there!"

"Mana… What's going on?" Renlan barked out through severe physical effort after yanking an arm back and triggering an invisible steel wire trap with a pull from another handful of wires attached to her fingers that split outward in the shape of a round star and sliced everything around her to pieces.

"I can sense something else on this island. It could be survivors, but I can't make it with those on my back!" Mana yelled out.

"Sounds an awful lot to me like you need our help then, lassie!" Goodface exhaled a cloud of murky green gas from his mouth and lit a matchstick from underneath his belt by rubbing it against his thick belly. A deafening fireball drowned out the ground level, making the overwhelmed tentacles looking to clobber the boatswain squirm. Sadly, this also tore a handful of persistent Polybians to lousy giblets, unleashing whole new hordes of tentacles upon the shifty boatswain and the rest of the crew.

"Please, in order to save those people, I need your help!" Mana bowed down and pressed her busted forehead against the rain-soaked rooftop she found herself on.

"If that's what you did, I'm deciding to stay here and keep this titanic tentacle island busy!" Captain Flint slipped out from the booming network of living tendrils rising to the sky. Chief engineer Marat called for a pair of cannons from his rolled-up posters that rolled their way to the fallen Captain who quickly snagged them off their wheels and stuffed them under his armpits, turning around and blasting aquatic projectiles in all directions while roaring like a madman.

It felt so wrong entrusting her fate and the fate of those survivors of whatever calamity befell Polybius to these lowly pirates. These murderers and thieves that acted however they pleased. Just because right now they were pleased to listen to Mana's pleas and help her, it didn't make what they did for a living any better. Still, it was all that those people had, and Mana couldn't pull them out alone. With the cover provided to her by the rest of the crew, the magician finally flickered away, choosing to stay in the alleyways and stick to the ground level lest the titanic mystery behind these ethereal tentacles find her as well.

"It should be here…" Mana threw her gaze about left and right, wiping her hair off her face while levitating suspended in mid-air. "Where are they?" she whined to herself. She couldn't afford to mess this up, she couldn't afford to lose these survivors or fail them, not when literal pirates were putting their lives in danger for her. The cannon fire of the Flintory and her fleet resonated in the distance. The muzzle flashes went as far as all the way to Mana, who couldn't have been farther than fifty kilometers away from the cannon fusillade.

The magician closed her eyes, ignoring the teeming tentacles, ignoring the fire and rubble around her and the broken bodies of the pirates that didn't make it or the thrashed Polybians reduced to chunks of meat and spare bones, whether it be a fate befalling them at the hands of their enemies, or that chosen by themselves to add more tentacles to the colossal network already thrashing about the island. Mana's eyes shot wide open.

"The pipeline!" she said to herself, taking a dash up and grabbing hold of it. With a crude yank, Mana displaced a pipe, expecting to hear the familiar hiss of passing gas, but nothing came out. It wasn't natural, she saw tongues of flames reaching out to the sky on her way here so some parts of the pipeline system still pumped gas, just not this one.

Immediately after squeezing herself in, Mana heard yelps and screams. Pushing through the feeling of creeping anxiety and the illusion of suffocating after so suddenly finding herself inside of a confined space while still struggling of shortness of breath already, the magician pushed onward by crawling further until the pipeline ended by entering a steel container and she flopped over and fumbled down to the bottom.

"Hurry, the pirate will kill us!" a high-pitched voice helped Mana snap out of the daze of the fall and pick herself up. A dozen of children standing on a monkey-bridge-like ladder reached out for a lid leading to a different pipeline.

"Don't open that," Mana warned the kid that had turned red from trying to turn the lid's handle. "That pipeline has natural gas pumping through it. You'll suffocate."

"So will you!" the kid pointed a finger at Mana and doubled his efforts.

"Killing one enemy isn't worth sacrificing all your lives for," Mana shook her head, raising her hands to show to the kids that she wasn't here to hurt them. If the worst came to pass, she could probably keep the gas out with Wind Release ninjutsu and flush it out from the kids' systems by forcing it out by a Wind Release filter through their lungs but she didn't have too much chakra left so she'd rather keep it for when she'd need to take these kids away from imminent danger.

"Says you!" someone from the monkey ladder yelled out at Mana with a defiant look on their face.

"Says whoever led you here to keep you away from danger," Mana crossed her arms and took a careful step back to give these kids their space until they trusted her more. "I'm not sure how good of a call that was, the island right now may not be safe for much longer with those tentacles spreading out of control. Either they'll overrun the island, or Captain Flint will crumble it to the bottom of the sea with a Walrus Hoche."

"The Inshirrinbu will not hurt us, it's trying to squash you!" a kid from the monkey-ladder growled at Mana.

"The Inshirrinbu? The Water Temple deity?" Mana squinted her right eye, struggling to believe what she heard. It was impossible for a Water Country religion to have spread all the way to the north of the main continent that was stuck in between Lightning Country and Fire Country territory. None of the five major religions should've had influence here, then again, Inshirrinbu and the Water Monks were known for a fighting style of jade tentacle constructs…

"That's right, our parents have had enough of you pirates coming here and taking everything away! Even if they had to sell their bodies and souls, they were willing to put it all on the line just so all of you pirates would die!" a kid screamed through tearful torment. So much distress came from the child's reaction that the entire monkey ladder crumbled into a body pile of fallen human children. Mana weaved her hands together to form a weakened Wind Release: Faith's Judgment vortex underneath the flopping kids to prevent any of them from getting hurt or snapping their necks by accident.

"Captain Flint came here just to take his tribute. It's just some coins, just money, how could your parents throw away their lives and condemn themselves to that end for money!?" Mana felt her own voice turning raspy and rising in tone. It felt insane to her that someone would willingly consume something like those tumors that the Polybians tried feeding them to make them into the living vessels of Inshirrinbu's tendrils.

"Just some coins…? How can you be so cruel, so greedy?" a little girl curled into a ball and pressed to a container wall, trying to get herself as far away from the confused kunoichi as possible while quivering with a face full of tears.

"You monster!" a brat in his early teens stepped in between Mana and the terrified girl, shaking his fist out as a feeble threat. "Money's all someone's got in here. There're no fish, this island is a rock, nothing grows here. That's why our ancestors drowned by the dozens to build a pipeline that pulls natural gas from the trench, that's why we serve all the food we scrounge up, all our delicacies to paying customers and that's why we're serving anyone looking for a place to stop by! Money, buying and selling goods is the only way for us to get by and you pirates, mercenaries and greedy thugs just come and rip it away! Oh, let's just take it from those stupid Polybians, they're so weak and helpless, they won't care anyway, right?"

"I…" Mana lowered to the ground and collapsed on her knees and rear, staring at the steel bottom of the empty gas container. "I didn't know that. This is all my fault… I asked the pirates to stop for a nearest raid to get them on my side."

"Serves you right, Inshirrinbu is going to clobber you and your pirate buddies! You're gonna get what yours, everyone coming here for a cheap cash-out is going to get thrashed!" a kid picked up a piece of busted metal chip that had broken off of the container at some point and flung it at Mana. The kunoichi didn't even try to dodge, though the sharp metal chip missed her anyway. It was too dark for these kids to see straight. All they could see came from the flashing lights of the flames and the Inshirrinbu's tentacles beaming through a couple of holes cracked in the container's side.

How could she have taken the meaning of money for granted so much? Perhaps to her, someone who didn't understand money and could hardly comprehend basic economical principles, money seemed worthless and taking money away from someone seemed like a non-existent price to pay for a better chance of rescuing someone's life. To these people, however, things were radically different. Money was their life. They didn't want it because of greed or the need for power or influence over the surrounding world. To them, money was the power to save themselves and those to follow their path. To the Polybians, money was something to sell one's soul for.

Neither pirates subscribed to radical ideals of freedom to do whatever one wanted, nor someone who hardly ever needed to scrounge individual coins to afford food or shelter could understand the Polybians' sacrifice.

"The Inshirrinbu, is it the deity that your island originally worshipped?" Mana wondered. "Or did your parents sacrificed that as well?"

"It wasn't the god we prayed to, but it was the god that answered our prayers," the oldest of the hidden children and the survivors of the Polybian incident spoke up with hatred flaring from his eyes.

"I see. In that case, apologizing will fix nothing. You may not believe it but even letting you or the Inshirrinbu take my life will not make this any better for you. Your parents sacrificed everything they were, and they had so that you could live on without oppression and make this island prosper. Killing these pirates or killing me won't protect your home and it won't make it prosperous. Wheat doesn't grow on a soil watered with blood," Mana sat down and pressed her back to the cold container, looking up and trying to figure out a way to give these kids a fresh start.

The Inshirrinbu, other pirates or ninja looking to expand their country's influence all the way here. These kids would have so much to worry about and all of those factors needed to disappear. Right now these children saw Inshirrinbu as their friend and protector, but his chakra and the way it corrupted people's bodies and used them as a vessel to manifest tendrils of its immense power couldn't have been further from being the traits of a savior.

"What are you doing? Are you hiding here?" the de facto leader of the kids took a bolder step to Mana, becoming braver at the lack of any signs of aggression from the young woman dressed in torn pirate garbs. The more the kids looked at her, the more pitiful she appeared. She lacked a small yet the most important tip of her leg or a sensible replacement for the handicap. She looked beaten to a pulp and smelled of sweat and blood. Her breath was uneasy and she couldn't speak without having to conceal panting. If she wasn't a hated enemy that drove their parents to sacrifice their lives to an ethereal abyssal entity of a higher plane, they'd almost pity her.

"No. I'm trying to figure out a way to make your parents' sacrifice mean something out of respect to their memory," Mana scrambled onto her foot, grabbing the wall of the container for support.

"If you want to make-up, pirate, you'll let Inshirrinbu kill you," one of the younger kids cried out with teary eyes and a squeaky, distraught voice.

"No, I'll have to give you a fresh start. Drive that guy out of your island, leave it in a place where other pirates or ninja would not wish to turn violent against you but would still trade with you to build upon what your ancestor have built here," Mana shook her tired head with messy strands of hair falling in over her face. The young woman brushed them aside, feeling the grease and grime that soaked them. Because of their stickiness, they moved easily. "From the feeling of it, I need to hurry too. The chakra of the other pirates is weakening, the Inshirrinbu has gotten the upper hand."

"Maybe when your dismembered bodies hang out to dry on the pier, other pirates and ninja will know what awaits them and fear landing here," the teen in charge of watching the Polybian survivors hissed in Mana's face from afar. The kids were angry and would've cheered if their abyssal demon ripped Mana apart before their eyes, maybe they had a good reason for it, but Mana knew the truth to be that they let their hate and need for retribution misguide them. Even if they were right to hate, that hate wouldn't build them a future their parents wanted for them.

The worst part was that they had to know that and accept that in order for the foundation to be laid for that future to be built upon.

"If I am to fail and die, I just want you to know that what your parents did was stupid," Mana cut through their hissing and hateful chatter. The shock of her proclamation so suddenly after she was pretending to come in peace made the kids freeze with terrified faces. "They threw away their lives to call forth something horrible upon your home. They left their legacy and their loved ones they wanted to survive and thrive the most, to live on an island ruled by that monster. Worse, they doomed you to an inevitable conflict that'd leave Polybius as ruins at the bottom of the sea. Even if I hate their last resort, I respect their intentions that drove them to it so if it is to be my own last resort, I'm going to go trying to make their mistakes right."

"How dare you!?" cries came echoing one after another. Even if whatever deal the Polybians made with the Inshirrinbu protected the children from becoming the monster's thralls, who knew for how long that'd last. Also, them growing up and living their lives with that wretch infesting every nook and cranny of Polybius was something Mana would wager her life on preventing. Now she'd have to face whatever the Inshirrinbu was to cast it to wherever it came from, if that could even be done.

When Mana extended her index and middle finger, shooting off a concentrated blade of Wind Release chakra from her fingers and turning it around to cut the lid of the gas container, using her Wind Release: Finger of Fate Jutsu, the ethereal tentacles began seeping into the container immediately. Knowing that the beast won't hurt the kids, Mana dashed outside. Her hunch proved correct as, after feeling up the vacated container, Inshirrinbu pulled its tendrils out.

The demon had utterly taken over Polybius. The tentacles were scraping the sky, wrangling through the clouds and had been rich and thick as a web network. Captain Flint and the rest of the crew hung battered, broken and suspended in the air as the beast squeezed their life out of them slowly, wrapping its tendrils around their bodies and snapping one limb at a time. More than a handful of the pirates hung lifelessly, judging by how loose their cocked back heads hung, the monster had grown bored with them and snapped their necks.

The unattended ships sailed off without a crew, letting the waves thrash at them as the Inshirrinbu slowly grew in size and might to wrap itself around them and crush them to extinguish the pirates' hope. It must have been thinking similarly to the kids in leaving the crew of the Pirate Lord Blue hanging dismembered, mangled and suspended around the rich pipeline system to show to the passers-by what awaited them if they were to come to Polybius seeking trouble and fostering ambition that the Inshirrinbu despised so much.

"Hey!" Mana yelled out. "We've met before, haven't we!?"

Just when Mana began to wonder if the beast could hear her and understand her or if she was communicating with mere thralls this entire time, a flash of lightning illuminated a cloudy, larger than the world shape in the sky, hiding behind the storm clouds and a pair of black eyes, squeezing a downpour of oily ink from above in wrath. Mana gasped as the ground underneath shook and the inky oil of the beasts' ocular secretions began whirling around her in a hectic whirlpool that unraveled everything around her. It was as if the entire Polybius and those left behind on it crumbled and withered away; the oceans dried out and dissolved into charred ashes to scramble in the cruel gale of time and the entire world liquified and became one with the oily ink.

"You!" the Inshirrinbu thundered in an unbearably vociferous and judgmental tone. "When I last saw you in the trench, I thought you to be just another greedy speck of rotten dust. Yet you are the most wretched one of all. Even my mind cannot find a judgment suitable to one as ambitious and rotten as you."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Mana teased the beast with a wave of her hand. "I didn't suppress my chakra to become susceptible to your genjutsu, to listen to your praises. I'm an entertainer but, contrary to your beliefs, I'm not willing to sell my body and soul out for attention."

"But it's true, you came here thinking you could defeat one such as me and cast Inshirrinbu out of Polybius. Now you presume to be someone who can order the Inshirrinbu around. Inconceivable ambition, shameless arrogance!" the one of unimaginable and abstract form thundered on inside the confines of the illusion it left Mana in with a gaze of its black eyes. "I thought I warned you that while your putrid lot labeled everyone they couldn't understand that wasn't a Tailed Beast a Lesser Demon, that doesn't make us any less dangerous or powerful than one of your Tailed Beasts and yet here you come, ripe with hubris!"

"Actually, I've sort of already beaten you. The only reason I humor to talk to you is because I need to understand what you are and how you work. I've only met very few of you and each time you appear to defy all logic and reason of how we understand the world to work," Mana shrugged as a living hand sprouted behind her, wearing five rings around all of its fingers with kanji for numbers one to five on them. The hand held up two fingers.

"What!? But this is my spell, you're under MY control!" the Inshirrinbu seethed.

"You're right, your genjutsu somehow leaves me completely in the dust in terms of raw power. But that's how you cast them, right? All power and influence, all shine and no forethought. There is more to the art of illusion than casting the most powerful and the most vivid one," Mana replied.

"Then try to break my spell, Girl of Boundless Hubris. And see how insignificant you truly are compared to my grand scale!" the Inshirrinbu sounded confident in the illusion's immovability he left Mana in and he was right to be this way. Had it not been for something that the beast had overlooked. Now, his fate lied in whatever he had intended for Mana.

The whirling black oil bubbled, splashed and spat corruption all around the place, staining Mana's face and her attire and the statuesque hand manifested behind her. The fist of the hand's clenched three fingers opened up, revealing a top hat cradled inside of the hand that rolled off into Mana's grip. One of the two raised fingers closed up, leaving one and the final extended finger pointing at the sky. Jade flames manifested behind Mana, rising as an indomitable wall that then took a bestial shape of a monkey with four tails.

"Just one more favor left," the Four-Tails thundered with a volume matching the Inshirrinbu's own. "Then, I'll smash you to bits for forcing me into your servitude! Just so you know, unlike my earlier proposition, this one won't come as a freebie!"

"Actually, you'll have your chance sooner than you think," Mana sighed. "Even if it makes me feel like I'm betraying Tomi's memory, I'll be setting you free today, Four-Tails."

"What!?" the Four-Tails straightened its back and raised its hand over its head, howling in surprise at Mana's revelation. "Why would you set me free now if you know I'll kill you!?"

"Because… I've messed everything up, like I always do. And… Maybe that's for the better," Mana dragged the sleeve of her military coat over her eyes, wiping a trail of wetness off of her eyelashes and gazing on ahead at the collapsing whirlpool of the Inshirrinbu's corruption.

"Brat…" the Four-Tails snarled as the black whirlpool vanished into nothingness in an imploding burst, raining down ink from the heavens and dyeing everything black as jade tentacles thrashed wildly all across Polybius and far beyond in the oceans. "Somehow, smashing you to bits after living with your seal etched into my soul for so long feels like I'd be putting you out of your misery."

"You witch!" a high-pitched, otherworldly howl made Mana crumble to a knee and writhe on the ground as the Inshirrinbu seethed with raw, outerversal hatred of an inconceivable entity that it was. "What did you do!?"

"Your illusion, you tried to take over my mind and spread your vile chakra into my network, like you've done with the Polybians," Mana slowly rose on her foot while the Four-Tails lowered its open hand to give her support to stand right while pressed her hand against the Four-Tails pinky. "Something you may not have been aware of, genjutsu can be reversed by skilled enough users. It requires an immense cost of chakra that I couldn't have even hoped to possess in a lifetime, but, luckily for me, I've got a Tailed Beast that encompasses a percentage of all chakra in existence within its form bound to two more of my orders."

"You're saying you've countered my illusion!?" Inshirrinbu blew a gasket.

"I've reflected it back at you, more accurately, whatever you intended to do to me with it, you did to yourself," Mana replied while panting on her feet and looking at the thrashing mass of solid, yet nonetheless luminous black tentacles with a shimmering jade pattern shining from the cracks and wrinkles. "You wished to control my body, so you've become in charge of your own. Bad news for you, because in order to control a body, you must have one. Thus, you've wasted an ungodly amount of chakra creating a body for… Whatever you are to inhabit. A body that can be destroyed."

"YOU!" the Inshirrinbu lost its voice in trying to express its hatred to Mana in a way her simple human body and mind could comprehend. Just as the endless network of tails whipped at Mana to annihilate her into a bloody stain of unrecognizable remains, the Four-Tails sprung to action, grabbing hold of the incoming tentacles with both hands and feet and biting into yet another one. The titanic beasts engaged each other in a wrestling competition with the Inshirrinbu wrapping its tendrils around the colossal monkey's waist, its armpits and thighs while the Four-Tails spewed jets and torrents of jade flames and black concentrated chakra bombs, biting and pulling on the tentacles it was fighting while the Inshirrinbu pulled the Four-Tails down into the ocean.

A distorted, world-cracking bedlam reverberated from underwater, expelling a blasting pillar of waters upward. A thick feminine shape took flight in the air from underwater. Its skin was black bedrock, its wrinkles and cracks shined with jade light matching the glow of the tentacles that the Inshirrinbu had manifested earlier. Tentacles wrapped around the faceless head of the avatar too, hanging and wrangling at the back of her head while the Four-Tails burst from under the ocean's bottom to pummel and breathe jade flames right at the beast's surface.

In being sealed away for those last few months, the Tailed Beast had built up a wrath and a need for a proper beating and it was living out its wildest and most hateful instincts on the outer-worlder. Pummeling it with thick and thunderous blows, slamming it and dragging it across the oceans with so much force that the collision shattered the massive stony stalagmites that were like blade ridges to sailing ships. The tendrils wrapped around the Four-Tails throat, dragging it back underwater and finding new depths to sink the Tailed Beast to.

With a weary and interrupted float, Mana hovered to Captain Flint and the crew to see how they were doing. The Pirate Lord had suffered notable losses amongst his crew, but, from what Mana could feel, those that came to rescue her had survived since the beast must have intended a far graver and slower end for them. Maybe it even wanted to enslave one or two of them to serve as more potent muscle with firmer bodies than those of the Polybians. Less likely to break down and release the hectic tendrils on the outside.

The Four-Tails burst out from the ocean again, looking limp and beat-up as the tendrils held it suspended and coughing up tons of saltwater from its open jaws that lacked a few molars. The tendrils of Inshirrinbu wrapped around the Four-Tails' arm and broke it backward, then slammed its face, wrapping the beast up in the pipeline and strangling it. Mana pressed her hands together, slowly and methodically moving through the notions of her hand seals.

"Fire Release: Searing Migraine!" Mana panted out. Rising from all the way down in her chest, a small fireball assembled at the tips of her lips that inflated after leaving Mana's mouth. The strongest Fire Release Jutsu that Mana could do went off and ignited the burst pipeline, covering the location in a ravaging firestorm. Further back, Mana could sense the Polybian survivors hurrying out of the container as it had instantly turned red-hot and the howling flames raced to obliterate it. The kids flopped to the outside and crawled away before their farther part of the pipeline that had been disconnected from the system burst as well.

Mana grunted as the airborne body of the Four-Tails flew back at her from the firestorm. Someone had tackled her and taken her aside as the Four-Tails smashed into the heart of the Polybian settlement and reduced what was left of it to rubble. The beast laid flat on its back with its tongue sticking out from its mouth, broken and wheezing, as the challenge of the Inshirrinbu's living avatar was too much for it still.

"Sorry…" the Four-Tails huffed out, looking down and out, scraped and bruised in a way that Mana had never seen a Tailed Beast. "That thing's a bit too much for me now…"

"Never mind," Captain Flint grumbled while cracking his knuckles. "You got your licks in. It's time for us to get ours."

Torrential jets of water began surging from the shores, encasing the captain's fists and turning them into super-sized forearm constructs made of Water Release chakra. With the revival of their captain breathing new life into the crew, the survivors rose for battle. Riding a stream of spewing water that rushed from the soles of his feet, Captain Flint delivered himself right to the Inshirrinbu's doorstep, slamming his head at the beast with a thundering blow that knocked his captain's hat off his head.

"Fifteen Dead Men! Locker Shut!" Captain Flint bellowed, delivering his best beatdown on the beast and finishing with a devastating Locker Shut. Even if the Captain had been dishing out mighty blows, and his crew wasted no time in joining their leader, Renlan came into contact with the Inshirrinbu's tentacles sent them crashing back at their owner, boatswain Goodface detonating an entire supply of chemicals and explosives all over the beast's body in his kegs, chief-engineer Marat employing and thrashing all of his gadgetry supply, everything the Pirate Lord's crew tried in their current battle worn state came off as worthless.

It took no time at all for the tentacles to swat the pirates aside, splattering more of Flint's crew or squeezing them to a bloody and gruesome end and knocking some of them down and out with a careless swat of its tentacles that even reduced the Four-Tails to a pummeled state. With the Pirate Lord's crew out cold or decimated, the Four-Tails lying atop of Polybius' wreckage, Mana looked up at the approaching dread as it split the oceans approaching the island. A ring of flames shined around Polybius where the pipeline went up in flames, yet nothing could finish the beast off.

"Serenity…" Mana chanted out, but the armor that formed around her was completely translucent and incorporeal, leaving her to flop on her face instead of standing on an armored leg. Her chakra was approaching its limit, the Four-Tails, and the crew were all wiped out.

"All out of tricks, no more games, no more ambition. Just like you loathsome humans are supposed to be…" the Inshirrinbu issued its decree with a thundering boom of a voice. The stony feminine figure disappeared underwater as the forest of sky-scraping tentacles came higher and higher, surrounding the island and snuffing the flames out. The showoff could wrap them around the world and squeeze the life out of it if it wanted to.

"You still conscious, Four-Tails?" Mana huffed, turning to the loopy face that stared at the sky. "I'm about to speak my last request and free you from your seal."

"This…" a childish voice came from behind her. Many more children burst into tears upon seeing the resulting carnage of the pirates' squabble against the Inshirrinbu.

"So horrible…"

"Please, stop!"

"No more!"

The cries of horrified and distraught children empowered Mana to speak and transfer the rest of the seal's power back into the Four-Tails by liberating it. The seal's chakra had been substantial enough to restrain even a Tailed Beast and to compel it to its user's will and so it would be enough to revive the Four-Tails back into a fighting shape.

"Protect Polybius!" Mana pleaded with the fallen titan who sprung back to its feet howling with sheer madness as the arm of the Five Pillars Seal curled up all of its digits into a fist that dissolved into an aura of chakra and surged back into the beast that was now liberated of its grasp. That wasn't entirely true though, as since the final order had a continuous implication, the seal's power would have to forever be a part of him and compel him to fulfill that order, which was why the chakra of the Five Pillars surged into the Four-Tails and revived it in the first place.

The berserk Four-Tailed Monkey leaped into the fray, once again engaging in a wild tug of war against the Inshirrinbu's tentacles. Biting and pulling them off now had a much more tangible effect, since the Tailed Beast was competing against a living thing and not some vague and abstract entity that could only act through intermediaries on the material plane. The tentacles wrapped around the Four-Tails' throat, once again pulling it into the ocean where it could once again half-drown the beast and drain it of its stamina and power.

All the struggles that preceded it, the bold beatdown that the Four-Tails had put on the Inshirrinbu, the attacks of the pirates, they all left their marks and enough of the Inshirrinbu's endless tentacle swam had been severed for the wretch to feel the fear of finality for the first time. It may have been that lack of familiarity with the dread of peril that seeped through its magnificently morbid form that restrained the monster, but, despite being overcome by the Inshirrinbu's wild raw power and vastness at first, the jet of green flames eventually sliced through a handful of tentacles, separating the colossal stone idol from its tentacle constructs and rolling a lifeless stone statue onto the ruined, ashy shore.

The God was dead. Made mortal by its own horrific power, killed by an unbelieving challenger who now panted sprawled on the beach of ashes, atop of the unbelievable foe that it had overcome.

Mana turned her head sideways and glanced behind her, where a terrified, noodle-armed teen approached her from behind with a saber he found off of the ground. His hands shook and his face was covered with tears. Despite the fear and confusion in his face, Mana smiled as she was glad to get to see it in the gleam of the rising sun since the stormy gloom over Polybius was gone with Inshirrinbu's demise.

"Is this the future you'll create for Polybius?" Mana turned back to look at the sunset and the magnificent sight of the beaten Four-Tails resting atop of the idol of a fallen god of the abyss. "One stained with blood on a marauded executioner's sword?"

"I…" the teen dropped the sword with a clang. "I hate you. You and all the other pirates! You come and you rob and you yell and shout about being free, but you're acting free at the expense of other people! Your freedom is the only thing that matters, the only thing that counts!"

"I agree," Mana closed her eyes. She felt like passing out, so the idea of being beheaded by a scorned orphan didn't sound too bad knowing that she'd get the rest she's due. Especially when she felt bitterly enough about her actions that she felt like she damn well deserved it. "Whether you decide to act in vengeance or by being the better man, the Four-Tails is what is known on the main continent as a "Tailed Beast". From now on, it will protect Polybius."

"A Tailed Beast? Here…!?" the young man stumbled back, turning to the slumbering titan further in the horizon.

"That's right," Mana nodded with a hefty sigh. "On the main continent, they consider these to be an unparalleled sign of military potential. They are the equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction on a scale unknown to mankind since its inception. No one will start a war against a nation that has a vessel containing the Tailed Beast within its borders, because a war on that scale might just end the world as we know it."

"Y-You… You've had the Inshirrinbu killed, you bound this beast to protect Polybius! Just who are you?" the young man grabbed the sword off the ground, though this time he extended his hands as if to defend himself from a perceived attack by the seated handicapped woman in front of him.

"You're right. Everywhere I show up, I mess things up. I may have ruined your life by bringing Captain Flint's crew here, even though just about any other crew could've come in our stead at any time. Still, I'm glad it was us. I'll gladly be the villain for you to blame, just because any other crew wouldn't have freed your island, and you'd have been left cowering from the Inshirrinbu until the end of your days. It's horrific, but it's true. As I've said, maybe I fully deserve to die at your hands, but I just wanted to go knowing that I'd leave you in a better place. One you deserve," Mana turned back at the frightened young man and gave him a bittersweet, tearful smile before wiping the tears with the collar of a torn and ragged shirt.

"What are you still doing here, landlubber?" Renlan climbed up from the rocky ledge out in front, crossing her arms and giving Mana a vexed face. "Weren't you in a rush to intercept your mates' ship? We're burning daylight here…"

"Right…" Mana sighed and stood up with a face looking like she had been the one to sell her soul out to an inconceivable abyssal entity.

"Wait!" the shaky-legged teen, who would from now on be in charge of leading his survivor brigade in rebuilding Polybius, with a little help of a Four-Tailed fire-breathing monkey, shouted out. Mana turned back with a curious look, yet her eyes had a taste of irritation in them, as if hurrying the young man to just do what he had to and move on instead of wasting everyone's time. "Thank you…" was all he uttered.

Mana's eyelids spread apart, and her jaw opened up. She never expected to hear that, but it was just the thing she needed to press her hand against her face and use her long black hair as a towel to soak up her tears. Only her shaking hand that held the hair hiding away the tears betrayed her true boiling feelings deep down.

Tracking Renlan through chakra sensory alone, Mana walked off toward what remained of Captain Flint's fleet to race to intercept the ship the Allied Ninja rented out to get to Getsugakure with.