Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Pirate VS Ninja

After looking at the standstill of Kusagoro and the Pirate Lord weighing each other and measuring their opponent, comparing them to themselves, Mana couldn't help but glance sideways at the fully exposed and shining with malevolent and twisted chakra Box of Ultimate Bliss. Occasionally a pair of purple thunderbolts interrupted her train of thought and made her snap back into the frozen world of reality.

"What's wrong?" Kouta asked Mana noticing her turn at the Box one too many times for it to be dismissed as being normal.

"I need to use it..." she uttered. "Before your father gets hurt, before it all gets even worse. Before I somehow screw it all up even more. The Box needs to be used, then Red will have no more reason to be here." she whimpered out in desperation.

"Don't be foolish, the Pirate Lord will kill us with even more focus and hatred if we squander the Box away. If you activate it and try to use it, there's no telling who'll speak their wish out first. We're still not sure how this Box works but as long as an enemy of this scale is present it may not be smart to activate it." Shimo cut Mana down before placing his hand on her shoulder. "I know you want everyone to make out of here and you feel it's somehow your fault, you always think that way but now our best course of action is to hope that Kouta's messed up father can kick this guy's ass hard and far enough for him to be as far away from here as possible"

"So you're gonna use the Box?" Meiko curiously got her hopes up as her saddened and feeling for her friends lips finally tipped sideways in a manner somewhat resembling a smile while her cheekbones protruded like a hilt of a concealed sword under a cloth.

"No. You're just going to touch it. Like I promised you, and we're heading home, mission complete, the Box's location confirmed... The world is better off with me staying the way I am" Mana shook her head still staring at the ruined ground beneath her feet.

Kusagoro finally leaped directly at his opponent, he did not try and employ any typical ninja fighting methods like trying to scope his opponent from a longer range or hiding – if he got out of Red's vision there'd be nothing standing in between Red and the young ones. The Pirate Lord needed to know that Kusagoro was a persistent pain up his ass as long as the long-haired beardo continued to mess with his mission.

The jounin decided to scope his opponent's strength out, give him a single powerful punch to the gut, not focused and unchained enough to slow him down but without any conscious effort of holding back. An actual strong and tensed muscle blow. Kusagoro was pleasantly surprised when his punch dove deep into the beer and rum belly of the Pirate Lord lifting his huge body off the ground slightly and making the man slobber up.

With quick precise blows that had much less force and focus but more speed behind them the ex-ANBU operative tried picking his opponent off, wear him out for a heavy finishing blow at the end of his attacking string. While the Pirate Lord did take damage from Kusagoro's blow, even spat up blood suggesting internal injury from the get-go, the fact that the man's body did not explode into fleshy bits slightly alarmed the Konoha veteran. A punch of such intensity could've accomplished wonders, killed chuunin or weaker jounin ninja with a single blurry and almost invisible shot. Dozens of times more than it took to break a world to rocky shatters, leaving nothing but space dust of an entire planet and yet all it did for this oversized hobo was make him bleed.

Akimichi Francho covered up his face and tensed his immense belly up, Kusagoro's blows landed, his roaring as they cut speed of pierced air, raced light itself combinations of blows bombarded the pirate's defenses bouncing off of the man's body without leaving much permanent damage. Just bruises, blunt trauma and small bumps. No fractures, no crunched up to porridge organs or a bloody symphony of a weakling's body exploding from the pressure of chakra transferred through their body surpassing their own many times over. Then all of a sudden Francho took a punch to the jaw twisting his face to the side and losing a couple of teeth and a squirt of blood enough to fill a sake cup.