---The Caribbean Sea, Aboard 'The Wraithling'---
The Wraithling was a phantom on the waves. Built from Alaric's impossible power, its dark, mokuton timbers sliced through the turquoise Caribbean waters with an unnatural speed and silence.
What should have been a seven-day journey from the seas near Jamaica to their target of Barbados was being accomplished in a fraction of the time. The sun was hot and the air was thick with the promise of a storm, but on the quarterdeck, a different kind of tension was brewing.
Reuben stood at the railing, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze fixed on the endless blue horizon. His usual easy-going smirk was gone, replaced by a look of intense, focused concentration. The boy who had once been a common thief, scrabbling for survival in the grimy streets of Bristol, was now a captain, a leader of super soldiers, on a mission to cripple the naval power of the world's greatest empire.
Flavia came to stand beside him, her own expression a mixture of love and concern. She gently placed a hand on his arm. "Amore, are you nervous?"
"That is not the look of nervousness, bambina," Matteo Auditore's dry voice came from behind them. The old Master Assassin was leaning against the mainmast, his own arms crossed, his gaze as sharp and knowing as ever.
Reuben turned his head, his hard expression softening as he looked at Flavia. A genuine, warm smile touched his lips. "I'm just thinking," he said, his voice a low, sincere murmur. "When we go back to Philadelphia… let's have a child."
"..."
"..."
The effect was instantaneous. Flavia froze, her hand still on his arm. Matteo, who had seen and heard everything in his long life, actually blinked in surprise. The nearby Auditore Assassins, who had been sharpening their blades, suddenly found their work incredibly fascinating, though their ears were burning. Even Jonathan Hugh, who was at the helm, his face a mask of professional calm, felt his eyebrow twitch.
"Y-You!" Flavia finally stammered, her face flushing a deep, beautiful shade of crimson. She raised a fist as if to punch him, but then seemed to remember they were on the verge of a massive naval battle and reluctantly lowered it. "How can you say that here? Now?"
Reuben's eyes widened as he looked around, finally noticing the silent, intensely focused attention of everyone on the quarterdeck. A blush crept up his own neck. He had been so lost in his thoughts, in the sudden, overwhelming desire for a future, a family, a life beyond this war, that he had simply blurted it out.
"Damn," he muttered, turning back to face the sea, the tips of his ears burning.
---Chesapeake Bay---
Silence.
A profound, unnatural, deafening silence.
That was what followed the impossible explosion. Where moments before there had been a forest of masts, a proud armada of the Royal Navy, there was now… a void. The sea itself seemed to have been torn open, a massive, X-shaped chasm of churning, boiling water marking the spot where dozens of ships had simply ceased to exist.
The surviving vessels, now scattered and leaderless, bobbed on the turbulent waves, their crews staring in mute, horrified disbelief. What had once been a fleet of hundreds was now a meager collection of thirty-six ships: one battered man-o'-war, fifteen frigates, and twenty brigantines, all that remained of the King's mighty hammer.
Admiral George Byng stood on the deck of his flagship, the HMS Sovereign, his mind a complete blank. He couldn't process what he had seen. The sound, the light, the sheer, annihilating force of it… it was beyond any weapon, any act of war he had ever witnessed.
High above, William Penn was in a similar state of shock. He stared down at the devastation, his mouth agape, his usual eloquence completely gone.
"T-This is an act of God," he finally managed to whisper, his voice trembling. He turned to Kassandra, who was floating beside him, her own face a mask of stunned, almost fearful awe. "K-Kassandra… are you alright?"
Her eyes were wide, her posture weakened, her mind struggling to reconcile what she had just seen with the two and a half millennia of warfare she had experienced. This was not the power of the Isu. This was something else entirely.
"Let it be known amongst you," Alaric's voice boomed across the water again, cold and devoid of any emotion, his crimson coat fluttering in the wind. "An act of war against the Holy Commonwealth of Pennmere warrants death."
And then, he began to fall.
He cancelled his flight, his body dropping from the sky. The sailors on the surviving ships watched, their terror momentarily replaced by a confused hope.
"L-Look… he's… descending?"
But it was not the uncontrolled plummet of a dying man. He fell with a strange, deliberate grace, his descent accelerating until he was a crimson and platinum blur against the blue sky. He landed, not with a crash, but with a soft, almost silent thud on the deck of a brigantine, his knees barely bending to absorb the impact.
He stood up, his gaze sweeping over the terrified, paralyzed faces of the British sailors.
"I'll show you another example," he said, his voice a low, conversational murmur that was somehow audible to every man on the ship, "of why you should listen."
Before anyone could even process his words, he moved. He wasn't just fast; he basically disappeared while cutting through the ranks of the sailors. The Kusanagi blade was now back in his hand, not using chakra this time. The first man he reached was a burly sailor with a pistol in his hand. He simply fell apart, his torso separating from his legs in a spray of blood and viscera.
The massacre had begun.
It was not a battle. It was a horrifying slaughter. Alaric moved gracefully, his blade faster than himself. He didn't just kill; he dismantled every single person he came across with minimal effort. A sailor who raised a cutlass had his arm severed at the shoulder, the limb flying through the air before the man even had time to scream. Another was decapitated, his head spinning from his shoulders like a child's top.
The deck of the brigantine was transformed into a charnel house in seconds, the scuppers running red with blood, the air filled with the coppery smell of death.
The captains of the surrounding ships, their initial shock giving way to a frantic, desperate terror, began to scream orders. "FIRE! FIRE ON THAT BRIG! SINK IT! SINK HIM!"
Dozens of cannons roared to life, a cacophony of thunder that shook the very sea. A storm of iron cannonballs converged on the small brigantine, a maelstrom of destruction aimed at the lone figure standing amidst the carnage.
Alaric looked up, his expression one of utter boredom. He saw the cannonballs, a swarm of black dots against the blue sky, and simply… jumped. He leaped onto the railing of the ship, and then, with a burst of chakra from the soles of his feet, he launched himself into the air, directly into the path of an oncoming cannonball.
He landed on it.
For a fraction of a second, he stood perfectly balanced on the speeding, spinning sphere of iron, his crimson coat fluttering behind him like the wings of a vengeful god. He used its momentum, its raw kinetic energy, as a stepping stone, leaping from it with another burst of speed, soaring through the air towards the next ship in the line.
He landed on the deck of a frigate amidst another group of terrified sailors. The massacre continued. The scene repeated itself, a horrifying ballet of death. Alaric would slaughter the crew of one ship, wait for the others to fire upon him, and then use their own weapons as his personal transport to the next vessel. He didn't even need to fly.
Panic shattered the last vestiges of British naval discipline. The remaining ships, their captains realizing they were not fighting a man but a demon, began to break formation, turning to flee, their only thought to escape this impossible, unstoppable angel of death.
Alaric, standing on the blood-soaked deck of his fifth conquered ship, watched them go. He sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. He floated upwards, rising high above the scattered, fleeing fleet. He closed his eyes, his hands forming a series of complex, blurring single hand signs with his free hand.
He took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, it was not air, but a torrent of pure, incandescent flame. The fire coalesced, twisting and writhing in the air, forming the shapes of massive, serpentine dragons. Dozens of them, each one a roaring, hundred-foot-long beast of pure, unadulterated fire, their scales shimmering with heat, their eyes burning with a malevolent intelligence.
With a silent command, he unleashed them.
The fire dragons roared, a soundless, terrifying cry that was felt rather than heard, and descended upon the fleeing ships. The first dragon slammed into a brigantine, not just setting it on fire, but consuming it in an instantaneous, explosive inferno that left nothing but a cloud of steam and a patch of boiling water. One by one, the fleeing ships were annihilated, each one erased from existence by a fiery, draconic avatar of Alaric's wrath.
In the end, only one ship remained. The flagship. The HMS Sovereign. It had been damaged in the initial blast, its mainmast cracked, its sails in tatters, unable to flee with the others.
Alaric descended slowly, landing on its quarterdeck as gently as a falling leaf. He looked around at the surviving crew, at their pale, terrified faces, at the proud, decorated admiral who stood before him, his sword held in a trembling hand.
No one spoke. No one moved. They were in the presence of a god, and they knew it.
Alaric's cold, blue eyes finally settled on the man with the most prestigious uniform. "What is your name, Admiral?" he asked, his voice quiet, almost gentle.
Admiral George Byng, a man who had faced down the greatest fleets in the world, a man who had never known fear, opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He tried again, his voice a hoarse, trembling whisper. "I… I am Admiral George Byng."
"George Byng," Alaric repeated, the name a soft, final judgment. "If you surrender now, Pennmere will keep you gentlemen as prisoners. However…"
He didn't need to finish. The admiral, his will completely shattered, dropped his sword with a clatter. The rest of the crew fell to their knees, their hands raised in a desperate, universal gesture of surrender.
Alaric looked at them with an unreadable expression, then turned and smiled softly as Kassandra and Penn, pulled by the invisible force of his fuinjutsu, floated gently down to land on the deck beside him.
The surrendered crew stared, their eyes widening in fresh shock as they recognized the man who was now, officially, the king of The Holy Commonwealth of Pennmere.
Alaric ignored them. He walked to the railing of the massive man-o'-war and placed a hand on the wood. The entire ship shuddered, then began to move, propelled forward by an unseen, impossibly powerful force, its cracked mast and torn sails irrelevant as it cut through the water towards the distant shores of the Chesapeake Bay.
He turned back to his two stunned companions, a wide, innocent, almost boyish smile on his face.
"So… surprised?"
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