Warnings: violence. LOL necrophilia. Capslock? .........tragicomedy???
Notes: Set during chapter 173. I figure Yamamoto's not going to sit around watching a bunch of snuff tapes all in a row.

Yamamoto was dimly surprised when the first fight went on a long time - more strikes of Squalo's sword to the other man's than he could keep track of. He'd thought maybe a one-two-three set of attacks would leave Squalo the winner, but no.

Squalo had to keep making plans to get a chance to strike - it was easy to tell when he was doing it from the huge and hungry grin that slipped out before he launched into motion. The opponent was tough even for him, and that grin came again and again. Yamamoto wondered how he'd do against an opponent like this. He wondered what he'd do, and avidly tracked Squalo's every movement.

The camera work was a problem. Sometimes there were shrieks and fingers in the screen and jolting around as the cameraman ran out of range of an attack, and Yamamoto leaned forwards and squinted hard as if that would force the image back to what he wanted.

Swords clashing into each other, the metal ringing, and he couldn't make out how steady Squalo was anymore, but he could see the other man's sword hand shaking. The sound of ringing metal came less as Squalo's opponent kept backing away in attempts to regroup, but that was put to an end when Squalo surged forwards with amazing speed.

Yamamoto realised something: this wasn't about Squalo's sword clashing into his opponent's. It was about hitting his opponent, cutting into his arm with a jet of red and making him drop his sword, just like that.

Yamamoto jerked back, heels scrabbling at the floor to push himself away. Somehow it was easy to forget an obvious thing like that, especially when the opponents were so skilled that every attack was met with a block. It was a match, after all, and you didn't expect ... all that blood, just from a match. He'd have thought Squalo would control himself better after how badly the battle for the rain ring had almost turned out.

The way that man's arm was bleeding looked dangerous. He'd grabbed his sword in his left hand, pointing it at Squalo - and then he threw it down, looking humiliated. Furious. Defeated.

Squalo laughed. It wasn't sportsmanlike, but it was very like Squalo, and Yamamoto grinned. You almost couldn't take offence, because Squalo wasn't laughing at his opponent: his face was tilted up into the sky, and Yamamoto knew it was because of the match and the victory and rush of it all, maybe even his opponent's blood and his own. Yamamoto gripped Shigure Kintoki where it lay across his lap. He could understand.

"And I?" It was Squalo's opponent, pushing himself up with difficulty as he kept his hand on his wounded arm. His Japanese was thickly accented. "Will you take the honour from your opponent by laughing at him and leaving him to die?"

Yamamoto's fingers went slack, loosening off Shigure Kintoki as he sat up and blinked at the screen. What a weird thing to say.

Squalo's laughter faded from his face. "No," he said, and walked over to the other man.

Yamamoto kept his eyes on the sword strapped to Squalo's arm. It struck him that he didn't like the thought of it - a sword that you couldn't put down, one that was a part of you, something you always had, until maybe it was all you had.

The thoughts were mostly instinct, and flashed through his mind in the time it took for Squalo to take the few steps to the other man and look down on him. Squalo's face was impassive - and then ... embarrassed? He swore enough to make Yamamoto's eyebrows rise, then turned to the camera.

"HEEEEYYY! Lissuria! Toss that shit over here!"

"Here it comes!" The camera jiggled and then whirled off, resting on a neat lawn for a second as the cameraman snickered. Yamamoto heard a distant thump, and then the camera was trained on Squalo and the other man again. There was an open backpack beside them.

Squalo held out a pack of plasters to the man sitting on the ground. "You call thaaaat a WOUND? Take these and QUIT WHINING!"

The other man opened his mouth, let it hang like that, and then said, "But I saw proper bandages in the bag..."

Squalo swore again, this time badly enough to make Yamamoto blush. "FIIIINNNNE!" He seemed unusually aggravated. Yamamoto wondered why.

Squalo bent to dig in the bag, and then handed over a roll of bandages. He watched the man work with the bandages for a moment - the guy was pretty good at using one hand to patch himself up - and then put his head in his hand and muttered something under his breath. Yamamoto stared wide-eyed in surprise.

Into the bag again, and this time Squalo came up with a bottle of water and a small plastic container. He dropped both into the man's lap.

His opponent looked totally confused, and Yamamoto snorted with laughter at his expression even though he didn't have a clue what it was either. "What's this?" the guy said.

"You've never seen MULTIVITAMINS before?"

The same scene played out at the end of the other matches, and each time the cameraman sniggered like crazy. "SHUT THE FUCK UUUUUPPPP," Squalo yelled over at Lissuria once, when someone asked for painkillers instead of the vitamins. He was so aggravated that he was blushing, and that time Yamamoto laughed out loud too.

Then there was fight thirty-six, with Squalo screaming in serious anger as his opponent cut off a good chunk of his hair, with Yamamoto shivering as he sweated in the intensity of it, with the tireless opponent at last left lying on the ground - completely immobile and surrounded by blood...

"TURN THAT THING OOOOFFFFFF!"

The screen blinked into blackness.

Shigure Kintoki was heavy on Yamamoto's legs. He realised he was terrified.

It was only for a second, and then colour, motion, and sound flooded back onto the screen. The sight was brown-red-white - the face of Squalo's opponent, his eyelids fluttering sluggishly, his breathing sharp and shallow and steady.

"He's all right, all right?" Squalo bellowed. "Gonna be good as new in a month or two!" He let the man drop to the ground, and there was an "oof!" from below. Yamamoto's relief left him feeling light-headed.

Squalo's face filled the screen. "It's not always going to be a happy ending, katana brat." His mouth widened in a sneering grin. "Got the stomach for it?"

The screen blacked out again.

It was a while before Yamamoto could get up to put in the DVD of fight thirty-seven.

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Omake (of sorts): Recording 36.
Because there's an inherent problem with taking Lissuria along on your deathmatches.

"Leave that!" Squalo snarled over his shoulder.

"But he's built!"

"LEAVE IT!"

He grabbed Lissuria while the latter was still reeling from the abuse to his eardrums. Lissuria launched a counterattack as they hurried away from the scene of the battle. "But Squalooooo!" How could a grown man with both balls (Squalo assumed. Lissuria's medical records didn't indicate the opposite) reach a pitch that high? "He's not even dead yet! He won't begin to smell until at least tomorrow!"

"He's whaaat?" Squalo scrambled over his own feet in his haste and checked his erstwhile opponent with several sharp kicks in the side. "Of course he's dead!" he bellowed back.

Lissuria walked over and heaved a theatrical sigh. "Who's the expert, here?" He stood over the body with a faint grin stretching over his face, and then sighed again, heartfelt this time. He reached out with a foot and traced the curve of the man's face with the very tip of his boot.

Both Squalo and the man moved back five metres in a desperate flurry of limbs.

"Playing possum." Lissuria shrugged. "Though he won't need to if we gave him a little time..."

"Just help me patch him up," said Squalo, too winded by his ever-deepening resolve not to start dying near Lissuria to put any strength in the order. Lissuria helped out anyway, though not without whining.

"Shut up and get back to taping."

Lissuria got up and turned away with a flounce. "If you're going to keep putting temptation my way and not letting me indulge, I'm getting one hell of a bonus when we get back!"

Squalo considered his opponent, now in a relatively stable condition; and the enormous distances he and Lissuria had travelled; and the careful editing of the videos. Lissuria got his bonus once they got back to base.

He also received a sound kick to the ass. "YOU'RE A FUCKING FREEEEAAAK!"

Lissuria sighed into the floor, raised his head to nod, and shrugged.