Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

In a Heartbeat

As the colossal juggernaut of the seas approached the shocked Konoha crew continued to awe at the upcoming terror. Everything went completely wrong with Mana's plan. Granted, there was little of any better planning to be done as everything that went wrong went wrong, not due to her poor planning but more because of a series of unrelated coincidences. For some reason it was Francho and not Flint who got her anonymous message, also Read's ship found the island much faster than anticipated leaving so much free time on their hands before the messaged ships arrived.

A round tower of a man stood on the main deck of the ship. He was so tall and so thick in stature that as he stood at the front of the ship half of his body was visible from ashore and his wide shoulders with ancient oak sized hands could've covered the whole ship from one side to the other.

Just like his name implied Francho wore a red, gold and white coat with decorated shoulders and a bunch of looted off medals and awards decorating his chest. On top of his head, his long brown hairdo was only restrained by a red bandana with a bunch of cut up bent and broken ninja headband protectors stuck up like armor plates for his makeshift classic style helmet. The Pirate Lord was of his later years – well into his fifties and had a dominating beard presence that covered his entire chest which would've looked rude by how strongly it burst from his shirt tearing his own apparel apart. Hanging on his belts were not handheld kunai dispensers, those were literal cannons with mechanized fuses.

Akimichi Francho was a man who found a way to make the weapon title "handcannon" sound more literally than anyone who came before him. Strangely enough, the Pirate Lord wore no swords, a man of his wealth must've had access to plenty of them so this implied that Francho didn't like that fighting style. It wasn't tough to understand why seeing how tall and round of stature the man was. His short yet thick arms would've moved quite awkwardly and failed to cover his entire body protecting himself from sword blows.

"Which fucking dog told me to arrive one day earlier to beat that slimy sea-dog Flint to the punch?!" the man shouted out in a voice more common amongst hobos of more humid settlements than a decorated and feared Pirate Lord.

"It was Mutt!" a wave of shouts echoed amongst his crew who looked so tiny yet only because of contrast with their Lord that it was so.

Francho's arm moved to his belt removing one of those massive handcannons and blasting it aside so fast and strongly that one half of a man got completely blown off while a whole bunch of men besides the poor soul got tossed aside and visibly injured. Then again, the full extent of their injuries was tough to assess with the poor "Mutt's" blood covering them.

"Why didn't anyone tell me this fucking ghost island had native savages? Who delivered this message to us!?" the Pirate Lord continued to thrash angrily throwing the whole towering ship off balance and shaking it in the seas it sailed on in the process.

"It was an anonymous message!" the crew once again rustled fearing for one of their lives since this time no one was actually to blame and therefore none of them deserved being blown to bits. "We intercepted it after leaving Flint's waters from the Parley of the whole Nukata port incident." someone yelled out intelligibly only to those ninja that still could augment their chakra.

"Your message got intercepted before it reached Flint by Francho," Shimo explained turning his head sideways to Mana. Despite having somewhat healed most of his wounds with the pill given to him by Kusagoro the Yuki was visibly worried and angered by the appearance of this ship. They had just finished dealing with some of those seemingly invincible pirates and now it appeared that there not only was more of them but that they were being led by one of the strongest pirates alive. One of the Pirate Lords.

"Eh, whatever... Kill those landlubbers and bring that Box aboard! I'll try to think of a wish to ask of that bloody thing!" the man thundered out loud enough even for Mana to hear and his voice was powerful enough to disturb the seas of the already stormy water. The clouds continued to get murkier and darker as the purple lightning storms got more and more intense. The exposure of the Box to the outside world appeared to be tearing the Earth itself apart. It probably needed to be used soon...