[h1][b]Batotoi Island[/b][/h1]

The flag and sails of a raiding ship of the Blackwell pirates was spotted by the small township on Batotoi Island's sole watchtower about half a day out from making landfall. This gave the townspeople plenty of time to scrub the rust off of old swords and sharpen them, clean out a small collection of seldom used guns, mount up and ready the town's sole, ancient anti-ship cannon and get together their decently trained but practically untested militia of scared and determined folks at the shore in front of their town's big wooden perimeter wall and equally sturdy heavy log gates.

They had all heard the stories of how the Blackwell pirates would sweep onto an island, then take anything and [b]anyone[/b] that wasn't nailed down before reducing whole towns to rubble, unless they were feeling particularly mean and did the whole thing in reverse before picking through splinters and ashes for anything still alive. The homesteaders gathered there were pretty reasonably terrified. They all knew that the crew of the raiding ship hadn't bothered concealing their approach because they were confident that it wouldn't matter what resistance they faced. Still, it was better to die fighting a group of Blackwell pirates than to live and be taken by them, in the opinion of many of those there.

So  as night fell and the raiding ship pulled up just short of the range of the town's cannon and sent out an odd looking little boat shaped like a big box towards the shore instead, the assembled townsfolk were practically giddy with relief! Maybe it meant the Blackwell pirates were willing to negotiate! It could be that they'd just wanted supplies, or medical attention for their crew, or if nothing else just valuables instead of people! Maybe they were saved after all, or so they whispered excitedly to each other.

This new, hopeful attitude lasted up until about two seconds after the strange little crate-shaped boat made landfall right by a particularly curious young hothead who had volunteered to lead the talks, as the front of it popped open like a ramp to reveal its only passenger.

[h3][b]"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGH!"[/b][/h3]

Everyone saw the unfortunate young spokesman go flying through the air like a rocket-propelled ragdoll but what happened after involved too much chaos, death and lightning-fast destruction for any clear picture to emerge from the handful of survivors. One young guy who liked to think of himself as the town's best swordsman swore that a demon charged out of the floating crate, caught the first sword swung at it in its teeth and then bit the blade clean in half. A woman leading the town's few marksmen said that it was some kind of a malevolent wind spirit that danced around her friends' bullets and made their rifles fall apart in their hands before slicing everyone up with razor wind. An old man who'd once served with the Marines and manned the cannon from his wooden palisade insisted he'd got the best look at the thing. He said it was a pale, shrouded Death God with a white, dark-eyed face like a skull and two black blades that drank in the light from the rising moon before they turned a dull red from all the blood. The old man said he'd fired the cannon at the creature in a panic, only to watch it bat the cannonball back at him with its swords so it smashed the old artillery piece to scrap and knocked him from the wall.

The rest of the old wooden fortifications were mostly reduced to splinters in seconds, and whatever it really was the rampaging monster was strong enough to pick up one of the a mast-sized wooden stakes that had blocked its way and use it to start crushing houses. After that, even the bravest defenders on the island ran for their lives and hid while their town was destroyed overnight by a single attacker.

In the morning, the rest of the Blackwell pirates came ashore and picked through the debris for survivors to capture and what little intact loot there was. Four of them together very gingerly escorted their now sleeping 'pet monster' back into his little crate-boat, then made sure he was bound up tight with chains and tied to an anchor that was bolted to a catch in the floor before sealing his makeshift prison up tight. With any luck, he would be exhausted enough to sleep straight through until their next raid, when they would provoke him into a rage again and repeat the whole cycle.

Then again, the chains were there for a reason and they'd learned that they could never be too careful when dealing with someone as unpredictable as Mushuro Takeuchi.