Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

... And a Bottle of Rum

As the purple lightning continued to provide limited illumination to the overall apocalyptic gloom emanating from the skies above the Box it seemed like there'd be no end to this incredible battle. At least there was none in sight. The two opponents had thrown immensely powerful attacks against each other that'd have decimated any opponent not on their unbelievably high level and yet these two only brushed the damage off despite its world-shattering proportions.

Finally, the Konoha jounin decided to make the first move after Francho had regained his freedom of movement. It was risky to attack the man head on however Kusagoro wanted to scout out just what Francho's current chakra level was as the warrior suspected that the pills may have boosted the man's chakra pool tenfold for a brief moment but it also may have reduced the pirate's power afterward. Such was usually the nature of such risky power-ups. The payoff usually made the benefits not worth the hassle if the opponent survived the sudden explosion of power.

Francho decided to not wait until his body and face got pummeled by Kusagoro's ground shattering and impossibly fast combinations of punches. The hulking brute threw a powerful straight punch which landed right in Kusagoro's extended hand. The blow however wasn't simply stopped by the crafty shinobi. A silent popping sound suggested a more complicated strategy being in play. The brief smile on the jounin's face only strengthened this theory...

Suddenly Francho's fist, Kusagoro's body and then his face and the entire area got swallowed in a cloud of smoke as Francho's crushing blow cracked a smoke bomb which the ninja had held in his hand having carefully removed it from his pouch while his opponent's attention was fleeting.

Loud thuds and cracks emanated from inside the smoke cloud. Francho must've been caught unprepared in a pretty devastating beatdown as the loud thundering blows and the shockwaves coming after them quickly dispersed the dark smoke cloud. Francho's stumbling body looked around not being able to see his opponent anywhere. It was clear that the Pirate Lord had received quite an ass-kicking inside that cloud, his bruises and severely busted nose, eye and lip testified it. Now Francho's greatest concern was finding his opponent.

Without alert or taunting, Kusagoro crashed on top of his opponent from high above. Dashing from above the layers of black as tar clouds so swiftly that the emanating airwaves split a gigantic hole in the skies letting a brief ray of sunlight in before it closed down again, fueled by the malicious chakra of the Box. Francho's jaw gapped wide open as his throat was crushed by Kusagoro's elbow and drove to the ground so deep and with so much force that it split the waters wide open and went well into the abysmal crater at the bottom.

After a brief moment the waters snapped back like the jaws of a monster crushing the two fighters underneath them, making it very unclear what was transpiring below. Finally Mana witnessed a bunch of astonishingly wide beacons of light, signaling the upcoming devastation to follow and finally beams of white light shot out from under the oceans into the sky, each at least fifty meters wide or larger and didn't seem to weaken as they left Earth's atmosphere. The ground beneath was shaking and erecting crashing waves that reached the very upper layers of the heavens above and yet standing on top of the Box seemed to absorb any shocks from down under. Almost like the Box had a protecting force field around it that only living avatars of chakra could pass and not destructive forces of nature around them.

Kusagoro appeared from down under after jumping out from the bottom of the abyss he had crushed his opponent down in. The jounin was struggling to breathe calmly, he appeared grasping for air but then his breathing sort of equalized and the man's hands weighed down. After the life returned to the shinobi's arms he lifted them back up and stretched his numbed up muscles out.

"Scared me for a moment there... Almost destroyed the whole damned planet" Kusagoro jumbled out as he grinned while looking down at an unseen point deep underwater as if he could see his opponent. Even through his remarkable restraint, even transferring all but inconsequential percentages of his chakra right into his opponent wasting none on the world around them the planet was suffering, both from the malicious effects of the Box seeing the light of day and from the cataclysmic battle transpiring before it.