Chapter 6: Death by Natural Causes

(Warning: This chapter is particularly gruesome, don't worry it won't always be like that. But things were done, and these actions have results. If you are a child, go get a beer, I know you won't leave anyway. HP isn't mine, War Games is.)

After a thorough examination of my current situation, I've came to the inevitable conclusion that Mana exhaustion was a bitch.

I'm not talking about a good looking, somewhat poetic bitch with a tragic backstory who'll soon have a redemption arc where she becomes the neighbourhood friendly baker. No, we're facing a mean looking, disease ridden filthbag of a bitch who only does it because it's a quick buck and she gets off on the clear immorality and sheer lowliness of the act.

A Cercei Lannister type of bitch.

It's been a good five hours since Ector, bless his old soul, carried me back to the base. He dealt with the mess and impending misunderstanding skillfully, from what I was told. And since the more...passionate, of my men didn't end up setting fire to our supplies and attack the ennemy in retaliation, I am inclined to believe it.

Old man had some serious leadership skills, now if only he could think more than ten minutes ahead I would be able to thow more bullshit at him...I meant, give him more responsibilities.

No matter, it is my destiny to take care of these meatheads and I've come to accept it as it was.

What I did not, and would not accept if I have any say on the matter was the sheer annoyance that befalls those foolheardy enough to spend too much magic without proper rest.

For the last five hours, I had to wait in this improvised bed of sheep skins while my men wandered about what 'mission accomplished' meant for the long term interests of our asses.

Of course, waking up came with it's share of fussing and questioning. But Martha wouldn't let them ask me anything until I've drank some water and ate something. I couldn't decide about what was more hillarious, seeing dozens of fullgrown men and one Boris intimidated by this sweetheart of a woman.

Or the fact that she gave me cherries of all things.

Anyhow, I ignored the expectant looks I was getting. Instead immersing myself in my new understanding of Kakachi Hatake, who had to endure worse and more often.

'How the hell did he keep spamming Kamui in the war arc, though?' I frowned as stretched, saying platitudes to Martha all the while. 'He'd use it a good fourteen time, in addition to all the Chidori, clones and the freaking Susanoo he got because Kichimoto decided Naruto was about mecha monsters.'

Keeping the inconsistencies of one of my favourite works out of my mind, and no Boruto does not exists, period. I walked to our stolen period, my message clear "War council, right now."

Fortunately, I commanded meatheads, not idiots. The relevent parties, by which I mean everyone, gathered around me while the high value individuals took a seat. It was social darwinism at it's finest, even the presence of extra seats did nothing against the sheer feeling of inadequacy most of them had.

It was revolting.

Abondoning practicality over perceived notions of standing and respect, what a joke. It is this same type of thinking that kept them from just poking the wizards with sticks when they come with new, absurd ideas. The same mentality that turns good people into disgusting filths because society, corrupt medias and celebrities said it was now the norm.

"Martha, Erwin, take a seat." I ordered, not paying attention to Ector's smile and brightening eyes. I received a token amount of resistence, before they finnaly put our booty to use and more importantly, allowed me to make a point.

"It's been five hours since the infiltration mission." I began "Everything went according to plans, but I was unfortunately depleted by some more intense magics I had to perform."

"Delpleted isn't the word I'd use." Ector interjected "You scarred everyone, you know, we thought we'd lost you to some silly sabotage operation."

"I survived, other aliments are of no consequence." I smiled "And there was nothing silly about it, believe me."

"Don't know." He chuckled "Putting cherries in their food sounds more like a prank than anything, a pleasant one even."

"Pleasent, huh." I shook my head, smile widening. "Well, this 'pleasant prank' might've just killed everyone on the ship by know."

…

"Pardon?" "You're not joking?...god, he's not joking…" "Hahaha, Da, dead cyka is good cyka."

Yes, that's what I expected.

" Something you might not know." I said, raising a hand to calm them down. "Is that even the most mundane object can be twisted, exploited and corrupted into a weapon."

"Yes, you can beat someone with a broom or stab him with a fork." Said Ector, picking up one of our abondent cherries. "But that's a fruit, Arthur."

"Ever heard of snow white?" I snickered.

"You bewitched it to kill them?" He asked, looking at it closely.

'So they do know snow white…' I noted, putting old stories into the 'Magical Friendly' section of references.

"No, I can't do that yet." I reassured them, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

"Then how does it work?" The old man scrunched his brows, once more mitigating my creepy factor for the sake of the group. "Cherries don't kill people."

"They can if you shove them in their eye sockets." I said calmly "But in this case, it was the pits which did the heavy liftings."

"The pit?" He looked even more confused, and so did the rest save for Boris, he was drunk.

"Aye, the pit, the cherry stone, the seed." I said slowly, trying to get my point across.

"I know what's a pit, kid." He huffed.

"Then why'd you ask, old man?"

"Why won't you stop calling me old!?" He rubbed his eyes, then realeased a long suffering sigh.

"Why won't you stop calling me a kid?" I chuckled.

"Eh, excuse me, sir." Erwin interrupted "You were about to tell us how you'd kill a man with a cherry pit."

"I would still shove it in his eye socket. But in this particular scenario, there are just too many eyes and too much sharp things between me and them. So I had to resort to a stratagem." I said, making the suspens rise even more.

"Just spill the beans already, Baldy was more forthcoming than you are." Ector complained.

He truly knew nothing of showmanship, the careful cultivation of tension for the sake of a climactic reveal went right above his head. And to mention Baldy, when his revelations were the direct products of my performance...this old man had no shame.

"Wouldn't it be better if I showed you?"

. . .

It was a testament of their faith in me, and overall recklessness, that my thirty poorly equiped, untrained men were ready to follow me away from the safety of our prison base onto ennemy territory.

Of course, we still maintained a proper fromation, with Boris leading the vanguard with his squad of longswords. Ector took the left flank with spearmen while the right was held by Erwin and his archers. I marched in the center, with our heavy infantry, which was nothing but five men with arming swords and shields.

This was more practise than anything, victory had already been achieved, after all.

I had already traumatised Baldy a second time to know that the sailers had indeed, eaten the sabotaged dinner. A quick flare of my magic senses confirmed the intel, but seeing is believing, and in cases like these, we needed to see.

The men were tense, the further we moved from the base, the more worried they became. It was understandable, none of us wanted to face a hundred angry privateer...except Boris, maybe.

"It's quite, isn't it." I said, a sad smile on my lips.

"Aye." It was Ector who replied, a few feets away from us. "Boris, why aren't you moving?"

A quick look at the vanguard showed that Boris and his squad did stop moving. As we got nearer, we saw that some of them were shaking. Soon after, the flanks reached them and had the same reaction.

I had a small suspiction of what was going on, no...that's lie, I knew precisely the kind of thing they saw. I knew what I did, I knew what I exposed to them.

We advanced, slowly but surely. Until we too came face to face with this...this nightmare.

Before us was the berth deck, where nearly a hundred hammocks were tied to poles. Below them were chest, sacs and other containers holding each privateer's personal belongings. An image familiar to anyone interested in the age of sail, or navigation in general...except for one not so little detail.

Death.

Corpses littered the ground, countless men with palid faces and bloodshot eyes laid motionless. Men with families, pasts, histories, wants and desires.

All of them choked to death, as their very cells were robbed of oxygen. It was a slow and painful death, as they suffered for hours upon ingestion of that accursed food.

And it was all because of me.

I knew it would happen, I planned for it to happen. Still, I was content to ignore that fact. Focusing on trivialities and mind games was better than confronting the horrors I could, did and would commit.

I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed, send somone else to investigate this bloodbath.

Seeing would make it real.

But that would cowardly, and I didn't do cowardly.

'They'd do worse to us.' I thought, closing my eyes for a moment. 'There was no other choice.'

I had no reason to feel remorses, these men were slavers. They'd kill, rape and plunder all without care. They would have killed us given the occasion, so why shouldn't we do the same?

'Still, did any of them take as many lives as I did in one day?' The thought was not welcome, yet it still wormed it's way into my psyche. I mercilessly removed it, there was no place for useless feelings in this type of situation.

I did what I had to, it's the objective truth. It isn't good, not pleasant or even just. But it was necessary, there was no other option but death and slavery.

I had a problem, which could've resulted in the downfall of me and many others. I dealt with it as efficently as possible, on a physical or moral level.

I shouldn't feel bad at all, in fact I should congratulate myself for such a precise and inventive solution. I defeated more than a hundred foe with no casuality on our side, using fucking cherries of all things.

Yes, Cherries.

It wasn't a ruse to keep some sort of weapon of mass detruction secret, well, insiting to apply the 'Show, don't tell.' writing advice to leadership was a ruse to conceal the exact details of what I did. It would be foolish to allow anyone to use my plans against me, even one so basic.

Cherry stones contain a compound called cyanogenic glycoside in small quantities, when pierced, the compound is realeased and will cause a plethora of undesirable effects such diziness, headaches, nausea, vomiting and eventually a painful death.

Of course, you'd need to injest a number of piecred stones to actually get there. And the symptoms would last a few hours, which is enough for you to see a doctor.

But if, hypothetically, you were on a ship with only one healer. And if again, hypothetically, someone decided to crush a large amount of cherry pits and distribute it generously among your food and water supplies.

Food and water given to everyone on board who cannot levitate stuff with a ticks.

Well, in this hypothetical scenario, this person has commited what amounts to a war crime. You are dead, your coworkers are dead, your pets are dead and everyone on the goddamn ship you wouldn't hide from the police is dead.

That's right, I turned cherries into fucking cyanide.

"Let's move them to the upper deck, it'd be easier to throw them all in one go." I said, breaking the men out of their stupor.

"Th...throw them?"

"Yes, throw them." I nodded, ready to use my inventory for yet another grim task "Unless you want them to rot in the hallways, spreading illness among our rank? Is that your plan to deal with the Wizards? Infect them with gruesome disease in a suicide mission?"

Needless to say, they didn't protest much longer.

Moving the corpses was somehow harder than making them, much more time consuming too. But thirty men with proper organization could do wonders, and The Fancy would soon be free of all slavers.

All but two.

'It's time to do something about Darth Virginus.'

-----------------------------------

Author Note:

-----------------------------------

Second chapter of the day! Courtesy of flace, my first reviewer.

You're welcome!

It is somehow calmer than others, with mainly the results of previous chapters being shown. We still delved a bit deeper into Arthur, who had to dirty his hands one more time and grew even more callous as result.

What's Arthur's plan for the wizards? Will he pull another trick from his sleeve? Or will he just use the good ol' superior number goes burr and poke'em with pointy sticks?

Stay tuned.

Goodbye!